RECONCILIATION IN SRI LANKA: OPPORTUNITIES, CHALLENGES, AND
PATHWAYS

by

Viduri Tatiana Dediyagala
B.A. (Hons), University of Central Lancashire, 2021

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
IN
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA
May 2025

© Viduri Dediyagala, 2025

ABSTRACT
This research critically examines the opportunities and challenges of Sri Lanka9s postcivil war reconciliation efforts since 2009. Despite hopes that decades of ethnic conflict
between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil and Muslim minorities could be resolved,
substantive reconciliation remains elusive fifteen years after the war9s conclusion. Through a
qualitative case study methodology informed by feminist critical theory and postcolonial
frameworks, I prioritise experiential knowledge and 8everyday9 understandings of affected
communities. Drawing on investigative reports, case studies, and ten semi-structured
interviews with subject matter experts (academic researchers, grassroots activists, civil society
leaders, and government administrators), I have identified three primary themes. First, I found
a significant gap between state and community perceptions of reconciliation, with government
actions at odds with local expectations and experiences. Second, I observe how intensified
military presence through surveillance and land appropriation threatened livelihoods and
deepened economic exclusion in the North and East, which eroded civil liberties, perpetuating
fear and mistrust. Third, I analyse how minority rights issues, particularly concerning the 13th
Amendment of the Sri Lankan Constitution, language rights, and political representation,
continue to reinforce inequalities that undermine reconciliation. In the absence of meaningful
state-led initiatives, my research highlights how grassroots organisations and civil society
actors have developed innovative bottom-up approaches to facilitate 8everyday9 reconciliation.
By centring the visions of Tamil and Muslim communities regarding pluralism, security,
political inclusion, and systemic justice, I explore pathways for a holistic reconciliation. My
findings reveal a disconnect between official reconciliation rhetoric and the lived experiences
of affected communities, suggesting that sustainable peace requires addressing structural
inequalities and embracing community-centred approaches within a holistic reconciliation
process.
ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT...............................................................................................................................ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ......................................................................................................... iii
LIST OF TABLES ..................................................................................................................... v
LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................. vi
ACRONYMS ...........................................................................................................................vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................... viii
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 1
1.1 Situating the Research: 8Post-War Reconciliation Process of Sri Lanka9 ....................... 1
1.2 Research Questions and Objectives ................................................................................. 3
1.3 Structure of Thesis ........................................................................................................... 4
CHAPTER 2. RESEARCH CONTEXT .................................................................................... 6
2.1 Chapter Introduction ........................................................................................................ 6
2.2 The Ethnic Makeup of Sri Lanka ..................................................................................... 6
2.3 The Roots of Ethnic Conflict: From Colonial Legacy to Civil War ................................ 9
2.4 Reconciliation Policies in Sri Lanka .............................................................................. 11
2.5 Critique and Limitations of the Reconciliation Process ................................................ 13
2.6 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 15
CHAPTER 3: THE MULTIDIMENSIONALITY OF NATIONALISM,
RECONCILIATION AND PEACEBUILDING: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE ................ 17
3.1. Chapter Introduction ..................................................................................................... 17
3.2. The Role of Conflict and Nationalism in Post-War Environments .............................. 18
3.3. Decolonising 8Reconciliation9 in Post-War Divided Environments ............................. 22
3.4. Peacebuilding in Post-War Sri Lanka ........................................................................... 29
3.5 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 34
CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY & METHODS .................................................................. 36
4.1 Chapter Introduction ...................................................................................................... 36
4.2 A Case Study Approach to the Reconciliation Process in Sri Lanka ............................ 36
4.3 Situating Feminist Critical Theory and Post-Colonial Theoretical Approaches ........... 40
4.4 Data Collection .............................................................................................................. 43
4.5 Limitations of Methodology and Methods .................................................................... 49
4.6 Approach to Data Analysis ............................................................................................ 51
4.7 Ethical Considerations ................................................................................................... 52
4.8 Positionality ................................................................................................................... 53
iii

4.9 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 55
CHAPTER 5: RECONCILIATION POLICIES: <FILTERED TRUTHS AND FAILED
PROMISES= ............................................................................................................................ 56
5.1 Chapter Introduction ...................................................................................................... 56
5.2 Navigating Disparities in Sri Lanka9s Reconciliation Process ...................................... 56
5.3 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 75
CHAPTER 6: MILITARISATION AND SECURITY: <CAUGHT BETWEEN SUSPICION
AND SURVIVAL= .................................................................................................................. 76
6.1 Chapter Introduction ...................................................................................................... 76
6.2. 8Everyday9 Surveillance of Civilian Spaces ................................................................. 77
6.3 8Everyday9 Surveillance of NGOs, Civil Society and Grassroots Activists .................. 84
6.4. Appropriation of Land in the North and East by the Military ...................................... 88
6.5 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 96
CHAPTER 7: MINORITY RIGHTS AND RECOGNITION: <WE FEEL LOST IN OUR
OWN LAND= .......................................................................................................................... 97
7.1 Chapter Introduction ...................................................................................................... 97
7.2 Minority Political Rights: Political Autonomy and Power Sharing............................... 98
7.3 Minority Language Rights ........................................................................................... 110
7.4 Bottom-Up Activism: Meaningful Dialogue ............................................................... 121
7.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 128
CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION .............................................................................................. 130
8.1 Chapter Introduction .................................................................................................... 130
8.2 Reviewing the Empirical Findings and its Overall Implications ................................. 130
8.3 Directions for the Future .............................................................................................. 136
REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................... 139
APPENDICES ....................................................................................................................... 166

iv

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1 Interview Participant Breakdown

43

v

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1- Ethnic Makeup of Sri Lanka

6

vi

ACRONYMS
CID

Criminal Investigation Department

COI

Commissions of Inquiry

CPA

Center for Policy Alternatives

CTF

Consultation Task Force

IDP

Internally Displaced Person

LLRC Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission
LTTE Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam
NGO Non-Governmental Organisations
NPFSI National Policy Framework for Social Integration
PCOI Presidential Commissions of Inquiry
PTA

Prevention of Terrorism Act

SLMC Sri Lanka Muslim Congress

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In the tranquil moments between drafting my thesis over the past two years, I reflected
on the support I received that made this research possible:
Firstly, I thank my supervisor, Dr. Gabrielle Daoust, whose intellectual generosity knows
no bounds. Your guidance has allowed me to discover my academic voice while teaching me
the language of scholarship in addressing the deeper questions of why research matters and
how it connects to the 8everyday9 lived experiences of those represented within these pages. I
am profoundly grateful for the countless hours of conversation, the margins of the written pages
filled with thoughtful feedback, your patience in helping me complete endless research grant
forms, and for shaping my identity as an early academic researcher. I extend my deepest
appreciation to my committee members, whose diverse expertise illuminated various facets of
my research. Dr. Fiona MacDonald, your valuable insights into the 8everyday9 politics of
understanding divided societies have refined my overall analysis. Dr. Luna KC, your probing
questions since my proposal <defence= days have consistently encouraged me to consider the
importance of cultivating a broader perspective in my data collection.
I also wish to acknowledge UNBC9s Office of Research for the Research Strategic
Initiatives Grant (RSIG), which provided essential funding that allowed me to pursue this work
with the depth it deserved. I owe a special gratitude to the participants who entrusted me with
their personal and often traumatic experiences and opened their hearts to this research. Your
voices form the essence of this work, and I hope I have represented your perspectives with the
respect and authenticity they deserve.
I thank my personal support systems: my parents, Damayanthi and Nanda Dediyagala,
whose love and belief in me and this research never faltered during the many hours you spent
reading numerous drafts across a gruelling time zone difference and took time to travel all over
Sri Lanka to locate important research papers. My friend, Bitika, who offered unstinting moral
support when I needed it the most, thank you!
viii

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Situating the Research: 8Post-War Reconciliation Process of Sri Lanka9
The end of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009 brought hope that decades of ethnic conflict
and inter-community violence between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil and Muslim
minorities could finally be resolved through reconciliation (Uyangoda, 2007). In the aftermath
of the war, political discourse emphasised concepts of national unity, invoking ideals of 8one
country, one nation9 and the promotion of <national unity, so that all citizens of Sri Lanka,
irrespective of ethnicity or religion, could live in dignity and a sense of freedom= (LLRC,
2010).
Over fifteen years, successive governments have established more than 50 reconciliation
commissions and projects, and numerous Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs)
contributed through grassroots initiatives. This period presented Sri Lanka with the opportunity
to foster peaceful cohabitation among communities devastated by war. This process was
facilitated by important mechanisms, including two truth commissions: the Lessons Learnt and
Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) of 2010 and the Consultation Task Force (CTF) on
reconciliation mechanisms of 2016 (Herath, 2018). The state also created the National Policy
Framework for Social Integration, the Office of Missing Persons, and the Office for
Reparations to address the legacy of conflict, acknowledge historical injustices, and create
pathways toward sustainable peace. However, the recommendations provided by these
commissions were largely ignored by the government, reflecting a persistent reluctance to
pursue meaningful accountability (Thiranagama, 2013).
Despite these institutional efforts towards reconciliation, Sri Lanka continues to
experience periodic ethnic tensions and communal violence (Razick et al., 2020). Existing
literature and media reports have characterised reconciliation as a 8failed endeavour9 in the Sri
Lankan context, as substantive change has not been achieved (Silva, 2018, p.1075). The
1

discriminatory political ideologies and power structures that fuelled the civil war have
remained largely intact, whilst the military continues to maintain an oppressive presence in the
Northern and Eastern provincial regions (Venugopal, 2018; Kapur, 2024).
The persistence of Sinhalese political dominance, systemic inequalities, and unfulfilled
rights of victims (particularly regarding land restitution) has undermined reconciliation efforts.
The failure to establish language rights and political representation has contributed to the
persistence of ethnonationalist narratives in the post-war period (Gupta, 2021; Kapur, 2024).
The military occupation of significant portions of land in the Northern and Eastern provinces
has prevented many displaced families from returning to their ancestral homes, creating
protracted displacement and economic hardship. Military-run businesses in these regions have
further marginalised local entrepreneurs, exacerbating ethnic tensions and resentment. The
ongoing militarisation has taken on an unprecedented role in civilian affairs, normalising the
presence of security forces in 8everyday9 life, and reinforcing the state9s ability to suppress
dissent through coercive means. Recent scholarship indicates diminishing public confidence in
official reconciliation mechanisms, as the government has failed to implement effective
policies despite the official rhetoric (Thiranagama, 2013; Gunasekara, 2024; Kapur, 2024).
The gender dimensions of reconciliation have also received inadequate attention in
official processes, disregarding the disproportionate impact of the war on women. Media
reports indicate that female-headed households in war-affected regions face multiple layers of
marginalisation, such as social stigma and limited access to decision-making processes,
creating a pattern of discrimination that state-led reconciliation mechanisms have failed to
adequately recognise and address (Gunasekara, 2024; Azmi, 2021).
Despite these obstacles, grassroots activism that sustains reconciliation efforts through
localised initiatives has continued to emerge. These represent spaces where reconciliation is
lived, felt, and practised through community-driven interpretations and approaches that

2

complement as well as challenge formal institutional frameworks. Such initiatives help build
trust and address immediate community needs whilst advancing long-term reconciliation goals
through the 8everyday9 experiences of those most affected by war (Walpita, 2023; Lonergan,
2023). The formal reconciliation process without transformative social change underscores the
need for a holistic reconciliation centred on social justice (Dayasiri, 2022; Upuldeniya et al.,
2022).
1.2 Research Questions and Objectives
My research aims to critically examine the opportunities and challenges of Sri Lanka9s
post-civil war reconciliation since 2009 by offering an assessment of major issues, including
gendered dimensions identified by the communities and how local actors and grassroots
organisations continue to advance reconciliation despite institutional constraints and
limitations. I will explore pathways for a holistic reconciliation that centres on the visions of
minority groups, particularly Tamils and Muslims in the North and East of Sri Lanka, with
regard to pluralism, security, political inclusion, and systemic injustices through a critical
perspective informed by critical feminist and postcolonial theoretical frameworks.
There is significant justification for this research given the gap between official
reconciliation rhetoric and the lived, 8everyday9 experiences of affected communities in how
reconciliation is experienced, interpreted, and practised by communities as they navigate, adapt
to formal reconciliation processes in their daily lives. By centring the perspectives of those
most impacted by the post-war reconciliation efforts, this research contributes to ongoing
debates about reconciliation, peacebuilding, and social reconstruction in divided societies. It
challenges simplistic narratives of post-war 8normalisation9 and interrogates the political,
social, and cultural factors that continue to obstruct genuine reconciliation on the ground. The
research critically explores recent institutional efforts by the Sri Lankan state promoting
reconciliation, the successes, gaps and limitations in existing top-down reconciliation models,

3

mechanisms, and programs and offers vital insights into reforms needed and alternative nonstate approaches to facilitate an ongoing holistic reconciliation.
The overarching research questions are: (1) What opportunities, challenges, and
implications have been associated with reconciliation efforts since the end of the civil war in
2009? (2) What pathways would lead to a holistic reconciliation process in post-war Sri Lanka?
1.3 Structure of Thesis
In this Chapter, I introduce the objectives and contributions of this thesis. In Chapter 2,
I establish the context for my study by examining Sri Lanka9s ethnic landscape, investigating
instances of social disruption that transformed inter-ethnic relations, and analysing post-war
reconciliation mechanisms. In Chapter 3, I offer a synthesis of the literature review on Political
Nationalism, Reconciliation, and Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka through critical feminist and postcolonial lenses, which elevate subaltern epistemologies and scholarship from the Global South.
This contextualises reconciliation efforts, power structures, periodical governmental responses,
and grassroots initiatives in post-war Sri Lanka and identifies key gaps and underexplored
dimensions, highlighting the unique contributions of this study. In Chapter 4, I outline the
methodology employed to explore my study, detailing data collection methods including
remote semi-structured interviews and document analysis with diverse experts. In Chapters 5
to 7, I offer a presentation of the empirical findings. In Chapter 5, I set out to examine the
disparities between state and non-state actors9 approaches to reconciliation, contrasting these
with official policies from the LLRC and CTF. In Chapter 6, I explore the implications of
military presence in the North and East, land appropriation issues, and the role of NGOs and
grassroots initiatives in addressing these challenges. In Chapter 7, I examine minority rights
in the reconciliation process, the 13th Amendment of the Sri Lankan Constitution and language
rights, and highlight how grassroots organisations facilitate reconciliation through bottom-up
approaches to overcome limitations of state-led initiatives. Finally, in Chapter 8, I offer a

4

summary of the findings and elucidate the overall implications for achieving a holistic
reconciliation in Sri Lanka.

5

CHAPTER 2. RESEARCH CONTEXT
2.1 Chapter Introduction
In this chapter, I establish the contextual framework that underpins my empirical analyses
by delving into Sri Lanka9s intricate ethnic landscape, describing the country9s demographic
dynamics and outlining the colonial strategies employed by British administrators that
strategically manipulated and intensified ethnic divisions between the Sinhalese majority and
Tamil minority. Tracing the progressive escalation of ethnic tensions, I highlight critical
historical exigencies that culminated in the conflict and explore pivotal moments of social
rupture, including landmark events of communal violence that fundamentally transformed
inter-ethnic relations, giving rise to the formation of the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam
(LTTE). Informed by feminist and postcolonial theoretical frameworks, I undertake a critical
focus on post-war reconciliation mechanisms by situating the contextual, structural, and
psychological aspects underlying the prolonged conflict.
2.2 The Ethnic Makeup of Sri Lanka
The ethnic landscape of Sri Lanka, illustrated in Figure 2.1 (Nazliben, Renneboog and
Uduwalage, 2021, p. 681), is characterised by diverse communities with distinct historical
origins and cultural identities.

6

The Sinhalese, Sri Lanka9s majority ethnic group, trace their ancestry to the sixth century
BCE. The Mahavamsa and Deepavamsa 1 chronicles state that their forebears migrated from
the East and West coasts of Northern India (Kulatilake, 2016). According to the national census
of 2021, Sinhalese constitute 74.9% (15.7 million) of the total population of 21 million. The
majority of the Sinhalese (70%) are Buddhist, 4.9% are Roman Catholic, and a smaller
percentage are Protestant (Lanka Statistics, 2023).
The Sri Lankan Tamil community originated from South India and is primarily
concentrated in the Northern region (Pfaffenberger, 2019). They comprise 11.2% of the total
population and amount to 2.8 million individuals. Hinduism is their predominant faith, but a
notable minority are Christians, and a smaller minority are Buddhists (Lanka Statistics, 2023).

1 These are ancient Buddhist chronicles from Sri Lanka (c. 4th-6th centuries CE) that document the early history

of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, royal lineages, and the island9s ancient history (Kulatilake, 2016 p. 426-7)

7

It is also important to note that a significant Tamil concentration is present in the Eastern
province, and is also thinly spread out across the island (Pfaffenberger, 2019).
During the British Colonial occupation, around 861,000 Tamils, commonly known as
8Indian Tamils9 or 8Plantation Tamils9, were 8brought over9 from South India to work in the
island9s tea and rubber estates. When Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948, the Plantation
Tamils became stateless as neither Sri Lanka nor India was prepared to recognise them as
citizens. However, through a series of agreements between Sri Lanka and South India between
1960 and early 2000, citizenship rights were granted to the Plantation Tamils (Verité Research,
2019, pp 3- 4).
The Sri Lankan Moors2, colloquially referred to as Sri Lankan Muslims, represent
another significant ethnic group (McGilvray, 2016). Their historical roots can be traced back
to Arab traders who established settlements along the North-Eastern and Southern coastal
regions in the 9th century CE. Linguistically, those indigenous to the Northern and Eastern
provinces predominantly communicate in Tamil, and their counterparts in other parts of the
country often use Sinhala as a colloquial language (Wahab-Salman, 2016).
My study primarily focuses on the principal ethnic groups directly involved in the war
and subsequent post-war tensions. Other minority communities, including Burghers, Malays,
Chinese, and Veddas, are excluded from the scope of this research. It is acknowledged that
whilst the broader conflict has undoubtedly impacted these groups, their experiences remain
insufficiently documented in the existing literature. The decision to exclude war-related
experiences of these communities from my empirical analysis reflects the specific research
objectives and constraints of this investigation.

2 8Moors9 is a term inherited from the Portuguese and Dutch colonial occupation of Sri Lanka (née Ceylon)

(Wettimuny, 2020) and continued under British dispensation. The Ceylon Muslims adopted the term 8Moor9
much later due to local political exigency at the end of the 19th Century (Balachandran, 2021).

8

2.3 The Roots of Ethnic Conflict: From Colonial Legacy to Civil War
A significant body of historical literature exists on how British colonial policies
purposefully exacerbated tensions between Sri Lanka9s Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority
as a means to consolidate their power (Daluwatte, 2023). The British favoured minority Tamils
for jobs in their civil service to suppress professional employment opportunities for the
Sinhalese (Janík and Janíková, 2018). Disharmonies between the Sinhalese and Tamils that
predated colonialism were re-aggravated by British ethnologies and censuses, which reified
each community as a distinct race. The resentment by the Sinhalese catalysed an ethnonationalist resistance. British policies centralised state power among English-educated
Sinhalese, Tamil elites, and selected members of other minority groups that promoted antipluralist Sinhalese nationalism (DeVotta, 2004; Janík and Janíková, 2018). Tambiah (1986, p.
120) employs the concept of 8parallel monopolies9 to describe the separate ethnic-occupational
niches held by Sinhalese and Tamils under British rule. Competition for limited resources and
privileges in the Imperial structure exacerbated perceptions of discrimination (Tambiah, 1986),
and the emergence of Sinhalese nationalism in the late 19th century was an attempt to redress
the inequalities to regain socioeconomic control (DeVotta, 2004).
Since Sri Lanka9s independence in 1948, the Tamil Community was dissatisfied with the
country9s unitary form of government and promoted a 8decentralised institutional governance9 3
(Herath, 2009). This concern was further heightened in 1956 when prime minister S. W. R. D.
Bandaranaike brought in the 8Sinhala Only9 Act4 making Sinhala the official language, and
instituted censorship measures targeting Tamil media and cultural productions, enacting the
8Language of the Courts Act9, which expanded the use of Sinhala in judicial proceedings, and
implemented the 8Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act of 19589 (DeVotta, 2007).

3 I use the term 8decentralised institutional governance9 to draw a distinction from the unitary state structure.
4 Official Language Act, No. 33 of 1956

9

Through legislative enactments, the Sinhalese Nationalistic governments bestowed privileges
to the Sinhalese majority, discriminating against Tamils, particularly in agriculture, education,
and public sector employment (Janík and Janíková, 2018).
These moves galvanised Tamil political parties to voice concerns over potential cultural
assimilation and the erosion of Tamil cultural and ethnic identity. Opposition to these policies,
spearheaded by Chelvanayakam, the leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front, was
confronted with violence from Sinhalese nationalist factions, culminating in the Anti-Tamil
Riots of 19565. Actions taken by the armed forces with impunity appeared to defend the
Sinhalese against legitimate opposition brought about by the Tamil people, who viewed state
actions as discriminatory and undermined their civil liberties (DeVotta, 2004; 2007).
A decision by the government to establish Sinhalese settlements in traditional Tamil
lands in the North and the East that began with the Gal Oya project in 1956 is considered by
many Tamils as an 8ethnic cleansing often with the use of violence9 (DeVotta, 2004, p.140).
The preferential treatment in the allocation of land and water resources to these settlers
contributed to the marginalisation of the local Tamil inhabitants, leading to a situation where
the native Tamil population became a minority in their own lands. Another critical factor to
consider was the failure of both Sinhalese and Tamil political parties to make decisive efforts
to prevent ethnic majority domination in the parliament during the transition from British
colonial domination to an independent and sovereign country (Geiser, 2022).
During the 1970s, several Tamil militant groups emerged, challenging elite Tamil
politicians who advocated peaceful resolutions to issues affecting the Tamil population, and
the arson attack on the Jaffna Public Library perpetrated by Sinhalese extremists led to a violent

5 Commonly known as 8The Gal Oya riots of 19569, these were a series of violent clashes between the Sinhalese

and Tamils, triggered by the 8Sinhala Only9 language policy. Following peaceful Tamil protests in Colombo
against the policy, violence erupted and spread across the country, particularly in the Eastern Province. During
the riots, many Tamil labourers were killed, marking a significant escalation in ethnic tensions (Wijesuriya,
2024).

10

confrontation. On July 23, 1983, an ambush by the LTTE 6 resulted in the deaths of 13 Sri
Lankan Army soldiers. This incident precipitated the notorious anti-Tamil pogrom during
which widespread violence, including looting and extrajudicial killings, were carried out
against Tamil civilians by Sinhalese ultra-nationalist groups (DeVotta, 2004; 2007).
The 8Black July riots9 prompted many Tamil leaders to demand a separate federalist state
called the Tamil Eelam in the Northern and Eastern regions of Sri Lanka (Wettimuny, 2024).
In the 8war for Eelam9, the LTTE fought against the Sri Lankan government for three decades.
The Norway-brokered ceasefire in 2002 granted the LTTE de facto statehood (Trinn, 2019),
and the LTTE established administrative structures in areas they controlled, providing local
governance and public services alongside guerrilla training and indoctrination to sustain their
political agenda. In response, the Sri Lankan government employed numerous
counterinsurgency strategies, and an expanded army carried out large-scale offensives to
reclaim LTTE-held areas to weaken the LTTE militarily (Wettimuny, 2024). On the diplomatic
front, the government managed to get the LTTE branded as terrorists by India in 1992 and 33
countries worldwide by 2008 (Amarasingam, 2019). Mahinda Rajapaksa, as President (2005–
2015), continued the military engagements and defeated the LTTE, culminating in the LTTE9s
capitulation in May 2009 (Siddiqa, 2021).
2.4 Reconciliation Policies in Sri Lanka
Post-war reconciliation policies were implemented by the government over 15 years
through multiple Commissions of Inquiries (COIs), Presidential Commissions of Inquiries
(PCOIs), and a Consultation Task Force (CTF). These include the Lessons Learnt and
Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) of 2010, the National Unity and Reconciliation of 2016

ාට꟒ සංව샒½ා¾ය (Dêmāla Êlām
Vimukthi Kôṭi Saṅvidhānaya) and in Tamil as ¬மி¿ீ ¿ Àிட鿁¬லைï ப꫁ைிகÿ (Tamiḻīḻ Vidutalaip Pulikaḷ),
referring to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, has been abbreviated in international media coverage to
8LTTE9. This abbreviated version has since become widely adopted in both Sinhala and Tamil language local
media when discussing the militant group, superseding the original terms used in the respective languages.
6 The militant organisation officially known in Sinhala as දÝමළ ඊලාම룊 ව샒ම룔්쩇ි ද

11

and the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission established in 2023 (Fonseka, and
Perera, 2024). The LLRC covered the incidents from February 2002 to May 2009 and made
recommendations to ensure that there would be no fresh outbreaks (Wakkumbura and
Wijegoonawardana, 2017). In 2011, it advocated legal and political solutions to achieve
enduring positive peace, followed by a National Action Plan in 2012 outlining multi-ethnic,
multi-party solutions within local opportunities, cultural values, and history (Fonseka and
Perera, 2024).
The bona fides of LLRC were criticised by human rights groups that it was a ploy to
circumvent international pressure over alleged human rights violations during the war.
Subsequently, LLRC proposals were restated to include legal actions the state intended to take
for crimes committed, along with a Presidential Commission to Investigate into Complaints
Regarding Missing Persons. Amnesty International, in 2021, noted that a considerable number
of people attended the Commission to document their accounts of wartime experiences. The
LLRC9s recommendations included immediate steps to be taken regarding long-term detainees
not formally charged with criminal misdeeds, assurances that privately owned land and
property will not be acquired by the state, and removal of language inconsistencies in the
processes and procedures of local and central administrations. In 2016, the government led by
President Sirisena promised an independent domestic inquiry to investigate the abuses during
the civil war and instituted a Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms by
incorporating the Consultation Task Force, Office of Missing Persons, Office for National
Unity

and

Reconciliation,

and

Secretariat

for

Reparations

(Wakkumbura

and

Wijegoonawardana, 2017).
In 2023, President Wickremasinghe gazetted the National Unity and Reconciliation
Commission and the Commission for Truth, Unity and Reconciliation, effective from January
2024, to identify core issues behind the violence and strengthen the truth-seeking process to

12

uncover alleged abuses that took place during the civil war (Fonseka and Perera, 2024).
However, the continuation of land appropriation and intense outcomes of ethnonationalism led
local think tanks to claim that the plan did not offer solutions to the victims of violence and
abuses as mandated by the objectives of reconciliation. Furthermore, many considered that the
proposed transitional justice did not constitute a sincere attempt but a means to forestall
international pressure and scrutiny (Fonseka and Perera, 2024; Mohammed and Hampton,
2024).
2.5 Critique and Limitations of the Reconciliation Process
Instead of instituting political solutions and institution-building processes, the Sri Lankan
government9s post-war reconciliation approach failed to speedily concede requests from Tamil
communities seeking information on disappeared loved ones, and the return of the seized
private properties, that stemmed from the majority political power enjoyed by the government
to act with impunity (Wanigasuriya, 2020). This resulted in the prolonged negligence of ethnic
grievances amid escalating tensions (Arambewela and Arambewela, 2010).
A significant portion of land in the North and East was requisitioned by the military at
the end of the war (Kelegama, 2024; Williams, Dhamruwan and Carrico, 2023). To date, the
government has released approximately 63,000 acres of privately owned land, but there is still
a significant amount of civilian land under the military (Economy Next, 2024).
Feminist social science scholars in Sri Lanka highlight the gendered impacts of violence
and displacements whilst challenging nationalist narratives that often exclude the voices of the
women affected by the conflict (Munaweera, 2024; Meegaswatta, 2018). As Thiranagama
(2011) writes in her book 8In My Mother9s House9, the war created <a story of isolation= (p.
2), with different ethnic groups failing to understand the suffering of the 8other9 and thus
stresses the need to challenge narrowly construed identity politics and disruptions caused by
8cycles of violence9 embedded in social structures in Sri Lanka (Satkunanathan, 2020).

13

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, arising out of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord,
is a significant move towards reconciliation and power-sharing between the majority Sinhalese
and the minority Tamils (Sivakumar, 2013; Aliff, 2015; Welikala, 2016) through establishing
provincial councils with legislative and executive powers in education, health, agriculture and
economic development (Sivakumar, 2013; Aliff, 2015). Different ethnic communities will
have the political right to decide upon local government policies and allocation of resources
(Welikala, 2016). However, successive governments were reluctant to move for a full
implementation, and the provincial councils were left with limited legislative powers to
actively pursue their delegated mandate (Pullé and Ratnapala, 2019). There are divided
opinions between Tamil political parties and Sinhalese nationalist movements on the lack of
political will: the Tamils view this as unfair and dishonest, whilst the latter maintain that the
full 8devolution package9 is a threat to national unity and security (Pullé and Ratnapala, 2019;
Aliff, 2015). One of the main reasons for this disparity in the constitutional pledge and power
dynamics on the ground is the adherence to ethnic majoritarian ideologies by the state (Pullé
and Ratnapala, 2019). This has contributed to weakening the commitment by Tamil political
representatives and civil society groups within the post-war reconciliation spaces.
Reconciliation efforts were downgraded and compounded Tamil marginality, creating
dependency without enabling collective agency for restoration and development grounded in
the cultural context (Junik, 2023). Continued application of the Prevention of Terrorism Act
(PTA), which sanctions surveillance, intimidation, and arrests of Tamils, has sustained a
climate of repression in the North and East (Amnesty International, 2022), resulting in
psychological traumatisation of women and children (Jayawickreme et al., 2017). This
situation, in the backdrop of prolonged exposure to extreme violence and forced recruitment of
Tamil youth into terrorist groups, resulted in trauma, personality changes, and anti-social
behaviour (Thomas et al., 2024). It is estimated that by 1993, 400,000 children were displaced

14

in active combat zones, and familial structures and support systems were ravaged (Thomas et
al., 2024).
Despite reconciliation efforts, the eruption of violent outbreaks signalled inter-ethnic
tensions on unresolved issues (Junik, 2023), and increased violence is a reaction to social and
economic marginalisation, communal divisions and mutual suspicions (Ramasamy, 2023).
Notable post-war incidents included violent attacks on Tamil students at the University of
Jaffna (2011), the vandalisation of the Jaffna Public Library (2013), student clashes in
Trincomalee (2014), and Sinhalese-Muslim communal riots in Aluthgama (2014). The 2019
Easter Sunday bombings targeted Catholic Churches and several hotels, causing 277 deaths
and 400 injuries (Saravanamuttu, 2021). Anti-Muslim riots swiftly followed, with attacks on
mosques, Muslim properties, and individuals (Mujahidin, 2023). The government continued to
dismiss these violent incidents as isolated occurrences, although the recurrence of racially
motivated attacks in different parts of the country suggested rising animosity against ethnic
minorities, indicating that violence can be sparked off by a triggering event such as an
inflammatory speech made in the parliament or during a political rally can damage ongoing
reconciliation efforts on the ground (Klem, 2025).
2.6 Conclusion
The trajectory of violence in Sri Lanka9s post-war context reveals systemic
marginalisation and unresolved grievances sown during the post-independence period through
discriminatory policies, unequal resource allocation, and consistent prioritisation of the
interests of the Sinhalese majority. Despite numerous institutional mechanisms put in place,
such as truth commissions, presidential inquiries, and transitional justice processes, genuine
reconciliation remains elusive. The state9s approach has been predominantly top-down and has
failed to address the psychological and structural damages that occurred during decades of

15

conflict. The persistence of ethnic tensions is a root cause for anti-Tamil riots and anti-Muslim
attacks in present-day Sri Lanka.
Within this backdrop, the implementation of state-led reconciliation mechanisms and
multiple truth commissions has resulted in commission fatigue, a state of diminishing returns.
My research investigates critical gaps in existing reconciliation efforts, exploring unaddressed
issues and unanticipated opportunities together with the challenges posed by rising ethnonationalism, persistent militarisation in conflict-affected regions, and the systematic
marginalisation of minority political and cultural rights. Through an updated and nuanced
outlook, I seek to contribute to the understanding of achieving holistic reconciliation and
positive peace at the grassroots level.

16

CHAPTER 3: THE MULTIDIMENSIONALITY OF NATIONALISM,
RECONCILIATION AND PEACEBUILDING: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE
3.1. Chapter Introduction
This literature review synthesises research on the theory and practice of Political
Nationalism, Reconciliation, and Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka. I have utilised a multidisciplinary
social sciences perspective situated in an interdisciplinary framework for examining the
broader research questions of my study spanning key academic fields, including International
Relations (IR), Political Science, Peace and Conflict Studies, International Security Studies,
and Area Studies to comprehensively understand the interplay in ethnic tensions, nationalist
politics, societal divisions, and grassroots efforts toward peace and reconciliation.
Underpinning this multidimensional analysis is a post-colonial feminist lens that seeks to
elevate subaltern epistemologies and scholarship from the Global South, contextualising
reconciliation, peacebuilding, and power structures, as well as post-colonial contexts
documenting government responses, civil society grassroots efforts related to reducing
violence, marginalisation policies, rights abuses, and advocacy campaigns in post-war Sri
Lanka. By critically examining existing scholarship, the literature review identifies key gaps,
methodological challenges, and underexplored dimensions, highlighting its unique
contribution and empirical significance.
The current debate and literature are largely set by mainly cis-gendered white male
academics in the Global North, <whilst scholars in the Global South are often forced to follow
suit= (Weerawardhana, 2019, p. 1). I have attempted to engage with scholarship from the
Global South, especially Sri Lanka, as well as feminist scholars from the Global North for a
broader decolonising methodology that can inform locally grounded perspectives.
I begin this chapter by exploring the literature on conflict and nationalism in post-war Sri
Lanka, critically examining how societal tensions evolve and transform, delving into the role
of nationalism, and investigating how political nationalist ideologies shape and constrain
17

societal interactions. This is followed by a critical analysis of how nationalism operates as a
political principle, its capacity to mobilise ethnic groups and create intricate power dynamics,
and how these dynamics are influenced by peacebuilding programs. I then situate and examine
the extensive literature on reconciliation in Sri Lanka, critically highlighting the disconnection
between formal reconciliation strategies and the lived experiences of individuals, explore the
disconnect in existing literature between the theoretical and practical dimensions of
reconciliation, and offer insights into the social dynamics that shape post-war recovery. Finally,
I focus on the current landscape of peacebuilding literature and the critical tensions between
top-down interventions and locally-driven efforts.
3.2. The Role of Conflict and Nationalism in Post-War Environments
3.2.1 The Role of Conflict
In examining reconciliation within post-war societies, I attempt to understand how
societal conflicts evolve and transform (Maddison, 2015). Broader political science academic
literature conceptualises 8conflict9 as a recurrent phenomenon characterised by stages (Lake,
2022; Monaldi, 2020; Becker, 2023) where initially latent social tensions germinate beneath
the surface, eventually emerging into public consciousness. The incipient tensions
progressively intensify, culminating in a prolonged and destructive stalemate before erupting
as a conflict (De Dreu, 2010; Maddison, 2015). Through a reconciliation phase, this critical
juncture typically precipitates a process of de-escalation, leading to conflict resolution
(Maddison, 2015; Pabón and Duyvesteyn, 2023; Singh and Siddiqa, 2023), wherein societies
attempt to reconstruct social cohesion and address the underlying structural fractures that
precipitated the initial conflict (Maddison, 2016; Singh and Siddiqa, 2023).
The above model provides a valuable analytical framework, but it oversimplifies the
multifaceted nature of societal conflict. In practice, conflict manifests as an intricate social
phenomenon that becomes deeply entrenched within socio-political relationships, perpetuating
18

both overt and systemic violence, ultimately shaping and limiting political discourse and action
(Hajir et al., 2022; Omelaenko, 2021). These patterns are observable across various social
contexts and manifest with intensity in societies transitioning from a legacy of historical trauma
through periods of acute violence or civil wars, as in the case of Sri Lanka. Such societies face
difficulties in determining specific historical injustices that can be practically addressed, the
mechanisms, and the order of priority (Åkebo and Thurairajah, 2024). Therefore, 8conflicts97
manifest along embedded societal fissures with the potential for renewed violence (Maddison,
2016).
Ethnicity as a possible cause for conflict has been critiqued because ethnic identity is a
meaningful category for defining group behaviour (Castro-Gómez et al., 2023). However,
ethnic identities can be instrumental in fostering conflict to gain political and economic
advantages (Vogt et al., 2021). The roots of violent conflicts are instrumental outcomes of
political manoeuvring rather than ancient hatreds and a strategic tool to harness ethnic members
for political leadership or to take up arms for a 8cause9 (Ruse, 2022). This framing is evident
in post-war narratives of how communities and individuals conceptualise their social reality
through interpretations of historical truth, asserting the primacy and accuracy of their historical
perspective whilst dismissing opposing viewpoints as biased, incomplete, or deliberately
misleading. This polarisation frequently culminates in absolutist positions that demand
unequivocal allegiance to nationalism (Maddison 2015; Korostelina, 2024).
3.2.2 The Role of Political Nationalism
Nationalism is a political principle that the state promotes to maintain power. The agenda
of nationalism promotes political power as a major instrument for the mobilisation of ethnic
groups (Howe, Szöcsik, and Zuber, 2022; Visoka, 2020) to obtain increased representation in

7 I suggest here that these 8conflicts9 are not necessarily active, ongoing conflicts/ protracted wars but rather

underlying tensions that could escalate (Maddison, 2015).

19

political and administrative institutions, greater autonomy over local resources, and the
promulgation of native languages to establish a social identity and a means of communication
(Visoka, 2020; Mylonas and Tudor, 2021). In post-war Sri Lanka, state policies have often
prioritised majoritarian Sinhalese narratives to maintain centralised control over minorities
(Ramasamy, 2024; Daluwatte, 2023; Subedi, 2022; Kadirgamar, 2020). The political
manifestation of Tamil nationalism emerged as a response to perceived marginalisation,
seeking enhanced political representation, linguistic rights, and greater regional autonomy in
the Northern and Eastern provinces. The politicisation of Tamil ethnicity is largely a
consequence of structural inequalities in resource distribution, particularly in former conflict
zones since 2009 (Ramasamy, 2024; Venugopal, 2024). Vigorous challenges confronting the
13th Amendment of the Constitution 8 and power devolution (see Chapters 2 and 7) exemplify
how ethnic demands can spark off and exacerbate tensions hindering the process of
reconciliation (Sivakumar, 2013; Aliff, 2015).
Nationalism is also a prominent driver of civil wars and a major obstacle to the
implementation of peace efforts (Subedi, 2022). As observed in Sri Lanka, efforts to transform
conflicts through power-sharing arrangements have failed due to the rise of nationalism.
Peacebuilding interventions focusing solely on aggrieved ethnic minorities can contribute to
the emergence of a reactive nationalism by majority groups, creating barriers to genuine
reconciliation. (Visoka, 2012). However, nationalism in its 8everyday9 manifestations is not
thoroughly examined within the post-war context of Sri Lanka (Brounéus et. al, 2024).
Richmond (2011: 16, p. 3-4) perceives the 8everyday9 as a space for <Offering care; respecting
but also mediating culture and identity, institutions, and custom; providing for needs; and

8 Sri Lanka9s governmental structure centres on a unitary system with centralised power distribution. Following

the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord between Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President JR
Jayawardene, the 13th Amendment introduced significant constitutional reforms that would <contribute towards
creating the necessary conditions for reconciliation= (Bandarage, 2012, p. 109).

20

assisting the most marginalised in their local, state, regional, and international contexts=, where
emancipatory forms of peace can emerge. The 8everyday9 is an arena (which will be discussed
in section 3.4 below) where local traditions intermingle with external approaches towards
hybrid forms of peace (Mac Ginty, 2014). I will be exploring how ethnonationalism dominates
and impedes key post-war reconciliation efforts by creating and sustaining ethnic divisions in
Sri Lanka.
Critical Feminist scholarship posits that gender norms and identities are intricately linked
with ethnic and political identities and nationalist ideologies (Lazar, 2005; Prügl et al., 2021).
In post-conflict settings, women9s sexuality, safety, and mobility acquire a critical concern, an
integral component of nationalist identity and honour for healing and progress to set in. In Sri
Lanka, Tamil women dealing with the trauma of losses and navigating strict cultural
expectations on widowhood face multiple layers of discrimination, experience restrictions on
their autonomy and public engagement, with notions of femininity closely tied to the private
domestic sphere (Thiranagama, 2021; Koens Gunawardana, 2021). However, women are not
passive and powerless members of ethnic or national collectives but are active participants in
shaping nationalist practices and ideologies (Kandiyoti, 2015).
Women have strategically utilised ethnic and nationalist frameworks to legitimise their
mobilisation and advocacy efforts in Sri Lanka. Women activists and organisations have often
adopted the patriarchal discourse of women as mothers and protectors of the nation, but have
leveraged these ideologies to gain public visibility and political voice to advance peacebuilding
initiatives, service provision, and political demands that benefit themselves and their
communities (Wickramasinghe and Kodikara, 2012; De Alwis, 2012). For example, the
8Mothers9 Front9 movement leveraged maternal identities for political activism whilst
operating within patriarchal constraints (De Alwis, 2012; Malathi, 2012).

21

3.3. Decolonising 8Reconciliation9 in Post-War Divided Environments
3.3.1 Rethinking 8Reconciliation9 Through the 8Everyday9
The term reconciliation implies the restoration of a previously existing relationship
(Sonal et al., 2020). Although the terminology and concept of reconciliation have long been
used in the social sciences within the process of 8conflict resolution9 especially among postwar contexts in the Global South (Bendana, 1996; Leiner, 2025), only at the turn of the 21st
century, the study of reconciliation emerged within political science (Bar-Tal and Bennink,
2004) and IR (Lederach, 1997; Rothstein, 1999). The epistemology of 8reconciliation9 evolved
beyond the traditional 8Western9 focus on conflict resolution to expand the study of
peacebuilding to encompass the micro-interactions through which people navigate tensions,
practice tolerance, and construct meaning post-war (Mac Ginty, 2014; Bar-Tal and Bennink,
2004, p. 11).
Within the broader literature, reconciliation is also surrounded by different perspectives
and is frequently contested (Wakkumbura and Wijegoonawardana, 2017; Rettberg and
Ugarriza, 2016). Bhargava9s (2012, p.371) writing on the broader post-colonial literature
identifies 8reconciliation as resignation9 where people co-exist with others despite past
hostilities, without a binding sense of pleasant and agreeable interrelationships. Critical theorist
James9 (2008, p. 115) posits that in 8slow reconciliation9, evocation of past images, memories
and attendant emotions can surface the possibility of 8positive reconciliation9, of 8bringing
together of persons, practices, and meanings9 in ongoing 8places of meeting9 (Porter, 2016,
p.12). Therefore, reconciliation as a concept is contextual and varied, and post-conflict
societies require a tailored approach that captures unique historical, cultural, and social
dynamics. It is a process, a goal, and a continuous dialogue, adaptable yet anchored in the
fundamental human need for understanding, respect, and collective healing (Porter, 2016).

22

In the post-war context in Sri Lanka, reconciliation is a catchword for a broad range of
peacebuilding activities undertaken by the state and non-state actors (see Chapter 5) including
rebuilding infrastructure, promoting social investment, tending to the affected and internally
displaced populations, overcoming ethnic divisions, making reparations to victims, and
reintegrating former combatants into communities (Silva, 2018; Ruwanpura, 2016; Pannilage,
2015; Keethaponcalan, 2019). The variations of interpretations are a consequence of political
influence by international actors and colonial epistemological hegemony that failed to enfold
local perceptions of reconciliation. These divergent understandings on the ground
contextualising the local perceptions are one of the foundational inquiries within my empirical
analysis.
Post-colonial scholars also argue that reconciliation must be re-centred around locally
embedded, historically conscious, and 8everyday9 processes of meaning-making and
coexistence (Bar-Tal and Bennink, 2004; Leiner, 2025). Whilst the literature on 8everyday9
reconciliation remains relatively scarce, emerging ethnographic research conceptualises the
8everyday9 not simply as a politico-affective space where subjectivity, memory, and identity
intersect, but also goes beyond formal conflict resolution (Suffla et al., 2020). This
reconceptualisation enables an understanding of 8everyday9 peace as a 8hidden script9 of
resistance, avoidance, and improvisation (Longba9am-Alli, 2022). It critiques Western-focused
reconciliations9 overemphasis on institutional metrics, offering instead a relational approach
grounded in proximity, interaction, and temporality (Njeri, 2022). Applied to Sri Lanka, these
perspectives explore the absence of attention to the emotional, cultural, and embodied aspects
of everyday life. There is limited recognition in current literature on post-war Sri Lanka of how
everyday life functions as a site of holistic reconciliation. Therefore, by drawing on
postcolonial and critical feminist ethnographic readings of the 8everyday9, my empirical data
highlight how reconciliation is not only spoken but also lived (see Chapters 6 and 7).

23

Widely shared emotions such as fear, anger, hatred, and fundamental beliefs and attitudes
can perpetuate conflictual relations and cause severe obstacles to peacemaking even after a
conflict is resolved through a peace agreement. A robust reconciliation process that is instituted
with the active support of all the parties to the conflict can begin to change these obstacles
(Bar-Tal and Bennink, 2004, p. 13). Feminist critical literature informs that a relational
understanding of selves is based on the type and nature of relationships we form with others
(Porter, 2016). 8Human lives are led narratively9, and war disrupts individual, communal and
national narratives (Porter, 2016, p. 16). Reconciliation can therefore facilitate conflicting
parties to effectively deal with damages caused by violent disruptions to human relationships.
My study is focused on understanding and exploring the interpersonal exchanges necessitated
by reconciliation processes, highlighting the non-linear, constantly negotiated 8everyday9
dynamics that determine whether or not parties believe and accept that they have reconciled.
3.3.2 Truth in Reconciliatory Spaces
Reconciliation spaces remain predominantly structured around formal institutional
settings, negotiation tables, legal tribunals, and governmental administrative chambers, which
are systematically controlled by men with established societal privileges (Shapiro, 2020; Sonal
et al., 2020). In contrast, women and marginalised gender groups generate meaning and
construct narratives through alternative, less hierarchical platforms (Atabay et al., 2024; Sonal
et al., 2020). These informal spaces, ranging from kitchen conversations and community
gatherings to creative collaborative environments, create safer, more nuanced, emotionally
secure contexts where individuals can authentically express personal experiences, listen to
diverse perspectives, and gradually build mutual understanding and collective healing among
communities providing opportunities for genuine dialogue and building trust (Deane, 2021; De
Mel, 2021; Sonal et al., 2020).

24

The main objectives of a public truth hearing are clarification and acknowledgement of
the occurred events, and truth commissions address the needs of war victims, make
recommendations for criminal prosecutions, evaluate institutional responsibility, recommend
reform actions, and promote reconciliation for dealing with widespread human rights violations
and impunity (MacDonald and Garcia-Moores, 2024; Fijalkowski, 2020). In cases where not
all perpetrators can be prosecuted, at least the 8truth9 can be said (Bangura et al., 2023). Critical
feminist scholarship on reconciliation processes focuses on the conditions under which public
testimonies are given, and the gendered nature of such processes (Ronderos, 2024; Opongo,
2021; González, 2024; Höglund, 2019). Research in Sri Lanka has documented that women
survivors of war as witnesses are often subject to silencing, disrespect, and humiliation, and
consequently, many suffer from psychological ill-health, new insecurities, and retraumatisation (Sonal et al., 2020; Höglund, 2019). However, there remains a significant gap
in understanding the long-term implications of systemic silencing, disrespect, and humiliation
experienced by witnesses in Sri Lanka9s reconciliation process. This critical oversight has
become a key focus within my empirical analysis (See Chapters 6 and 7).
3.3.3 Gendered Notions in Reconciliatory Spaces
War and conflict alter many social norms and structures and directly impact gender roles
and responsibilities in a society (Sonal et al., 2020, p. 1). Women experience conflict and
respond to violence and deprivation in ways different from men, and these must be taken into
account to ensure successful and sustainable reconstruction and reconciliation in post-war
societies (Sonal et al., 2020; Brüntrup-Seidemann, 2021; Weber, 2023). However, the concerns
of women are often overshadowed in post-war 8everyday9 reconciliation efforts by issues
dealing with cessation of violence, infrastructural rebuilding, and economic recovery (Sonal et
al., 2020).

25

The security of the state incorporates human security, prevention of sexual violence,
economic opportunities, social safety nets, and environmental security (Sonal et al., 2020;
Brüntrup-Seidemann, 2021; Zucatto, 2023; K.C. and Whetstone, 2022). However, postcolonial and critical feminist scholars emphasise that the security of the state must include
women and other marginalised groups (Purewal and Dingli, 2020; Sonal et al., 2020).
Currently, more attention is paid in Sri Lanka on issues such as the state and gendered
nationalism, gender and conflict, militarism and militarised masculinity, sexual and genderbased violence in wartime, women9s roles in conflict as victims, perpetrators of violence, and
post-war reconciliation (Sonal et al., 2020; K.C. and Whetstone, 2022; Brounéus et al., 2024;
Azmi, 2021). Although the Sri Lankan civil war was identity-based and driven by
ethnonationalism, women in their repression and liberation acquired an important political
identity (Sonal et al., 2020; Hettiarachchi, 2023; Azmi, 2021). The interplay between gender
and ethnic dynamics in Sri Lanka has led to intersectional influences with widespread
consequences for women as victims, combatants, and agents for change. The war exacerbated
socioeconomic and physical vulnerabilities of women, but at the same time created conditions
for their empowerment (Sonal et al., 2020; Azmi, 2021).
Post-war literature reveals that in heavily militarised zones, women were targeted for
sexual violence more than their male peers (Sonal et al., 2020; K. C and Whetstone, 2024;
Fonseka, 2021). Some were forced to provide sexual favours for obtaining government services
and information on their missing relatives (Sonal et al., 2020; Wijeyesekera, 2020; Guruge et.
al., 2017; Höglund, 2019). In addition to discrimination and victimisation, a significant number
of Tamil women participated as militants and combatants in the war (Sonal et al., 2020; K. C
and Whetstone, 2022; Höglund, 2019).
Vasudevan (2013) researching female-headed households in Northern Sri Lanka, argued
that their vulnerabilities stem from the loss of assets during the conflict, discriminatory

26

administrative laws, shortage of paid employment opportunities, physical disabilities and lack
of direct compensation or assistance from the government, and the risk of sexual harassment
and abuse (Meegaswatta, 2022). In an ethnographic field report on experiences of Tamil
women during the post-war period, Gowrinathan and Cronin-Furman (2015) state that the lack
of legal redress for violence further contributes to their insecurity in the North and the East.
Tamil women formerly associated with the LTTE are marginalised in post-war Sri Lanka by
their reluctance to report sexual and gender-based violence committed by either security forces
or members of their own communities (de Mel and Medawatte, 2021; Deane, 2022; Emmanuel
and Saroor, 2022). Furthermore, to push behind the troublesome LTTE past, Tamil
communities tend to ostracise LTTE widows (Premaratne and Klimesova, 2015). Former
female combatants are unwilling to speak about their experiences in the war for fear of
retribution within their communities (Jayawardena and Pinto-Jayawardena, 2016).
Reconciliation programs focusing on these gender and identity aspects of former combatants
have not been designed (Sonal et al., 2020). Reconciliation should be considered a gendered
process (Sonal et al., 2020; Giri, 2023; Brounéus et. al, 2024), and relationship-building within
the processes occur in a culture of reconciliation as a visible contrast to militarised violence
(Satha-Anand, 2020).
3.3.4 Reconciliation as a 8Process9 versus an 8Outcome9
Since the end of the war, the discourse on Reconciliation in Sri Lanka has been a
continuing theme. An extensive criticism in academic literature depicts the reconciliation
process as a failed attempt to achieve peaceful cohabitation, whilst other analyses recognise
opportunities for a reorganisation within the divergent sociocultural, political and economic
landscape in Sri Lanka (Silva et al., 2020; Subramaniam-Nisanka et al., 2021; Jayathilaka,
2020). Notably, there is a significant gap in the existing literature regarding the perspectives of
people directly affected by the reconciliation process, in terms of a ground-level understanding

27

of how local populations view reconciliation: whether they believe the process should be
abandoned or it is an iterative approach that requires a consistent critique, remodelling, and
progressive advancement. This significant gap in scholarly understanding has been a primary
motivation driving my empirical analysis. Whilst existing literature examines reconciliation
through various analytical frameworks (Silva et al., 2020; Subramaniam-Nisanka et al., 2021;
Perera and Samarathunga, 2023) there is a critical need to deeply comprehend the local
understanding of reconciliation as both a journey and a dynamic process within the context of
Sri Lanka9s ongoing reconciliation efforts.
Recently, the reconciliation process emphasises a dialectical standpoint seeking to
synthesise its process and outcomes. Reconciliation is both a journey and a destination
distinguished by iterative, non-linear progression (Bloomfield, 2006). For instance, the
reconciliation process in post-apartheid South Africa showcased that institutional mechanisms
can simultaneously serve as both process catalysts and potential outcome indicators, and
demonstrates that this dual functionality poses a strong challenge to a simplistic
dichotomisation between process or outcome in reconciliation (Rigby, 2001). Critical literature
in Sri Lanka posits that, as a by-product of conflict resolution efforts, leaders engaged in
reconciliation may forge unexpected personal connections. However, for a holistic
reconciliation, conflicting parties must secure broader societal support from a majority of
stakeholders to achieve a sustainable and enduring peace that fundamentally transforms
relationships (Subramaniam-Nisanka, 2021).
Critical peace theorists in Sri Lanka emphasise that psychological transformation must
permeate the social fabric, capable of being embraced by the majority of society members to
establish a sustainable reconciliation supported by peaceful relationships (Silva et al., 2020;
Subramaniam-Nisanka, 2021). Psychological transformation is a nuanced journey that requires
extensive cognitive and 8emotional recalibration9, a comprehensive unlearning of entrenched

28

beliefs and attitudes, involving sophisticated mechanisms of information processing, logical
persuasion, and cognitive re-categorisation (Upuldeniya et al., 2022).
The state9s desire to treat reconciliation as an outcome is to appease international donors
and allies, both for economic assistance and political stability (Jagannathan, 2020). This stems
from a colonial Western perspective to measure reconciliation in terms of monetary and
economic criteria (Maddison, 2022; Amundsen, 2018). However, reconciliation is both context
specific and aligns with the local, as illustrated by reconciliation attempts labelled
8communitarian social harmony9 by Buddhist and Catholic religious leaders in the North and
East leveraging religious paradigms to facilitate community dialogues and healing processes
through public apology and forgiveness, supplanting past conflicts with community consensus
(Hirsch, 2012, p. 1-2) Nevertheless, these efforts often come against the deep-seated mistrust
between Tamils and Sinhalese influenced by historical power dynamics and unresolved
grievances (Lonergan, 2016; Jayathilaka and Gamage, 2024).
Postcolonial theorists posit that a holistic reconciliation cannot be achieved until
hierarchical institutions with oppressive agendas and internalised superiority/inferiority
psychological orientations are dismantled, and socio-cultural-political identities that give rise
to marginalisation and historical violence are removed (Wakkumbura and Wijegoonawardana,
2017). The benefits include surfacing collective healing and mutual accountability among
former antagonists, new orientations and commitments to everyday lives, fostering cultural
inclusion, equitable justice in laws and rules, and life-satisfaction and overall well-being
(Orjuela, 2024; Thiranagama, 2013).
3.4. Peacebuilding in Post-War Sri Lanka
3.4.1 Challenges to 8Top-Down9 Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka
Peacebuilding is an intervention to prevent the recurrence of violence and foster
sustainable peace in post-conflict societies (Zaum, 2012). It is also considered an infrastructure
29

within and between nations, offering alternatives to and removing causes of war (Galtung,
1976). International focus on peacebuilding grew when former UN Secretary-General BoutrosGhali (1992) defined it in 8an Agenda for Peace9, differentiating between peacemaking,
peacebuilding, and peacekeeping and emphasised post-conflict structural peacebuilding (1992,
p. 8): <Rebuilding the institutions and infrastructures of nations torn by civil war and strife
and building bonds of peaceful mutual benefit among nations formerly at war.=
Boutros-Ghali expanded post-conflict peacebuilding to encompass humanitarian,
economic, and political assistance beyond combatant demobilisation and transition to
participatory elections (Zaum, 2012). Contemporary mainstream peacebuilding, often termed
liberal peacebuilding, is rooted in liberal peace theory (Newman, 2009), grounded in
universalistic thought, which holds that democracy ensures peaceful, stable domestic politics
within states (Richmond, 2014). According to the concept of 8peace-as-governance9, a blend
of institutional regulation and liberal freedoms, external and internal actors working towards
an overarching universal liberal peace vision can bring about comprehensive reforms in social,
economic, political, and cultural regulations and governance frameworks (Richmond, 2014).
Liberal peacebuilding has dominated the field of IR, albeit with numerous criticisms over its
legitimacy and effectiveness, lack of local involvement and failure to consult local stakeholders
(Newman et al., 2009; Zaum, 2013).
An examination of peace accords reveals that the negotiation processes and
comprehensive medium and long-range peace strategies have become inextricably linked to
international peace interventions and involve substantial international participation (Selby,
2013). Through a standardised, universalist model, these impose a one-size-fits-all framework
that neglects the intricate cultural, social, and contextual nuances of specific communities.
Post-colonial literature critiques this universalist approach and argues that liberal peace
approaches instrumentalise, especially gender, and suppress postcolonial histories by

30

promoting technical 8fixes9 rather than relational transformations. Gender is frequently 8added
in9 to peacebuilding agendas as a quantifiable target (such as participation quotas indicators),
rather than understood as an active set of power relations embedded in the 8everyday9. These
frameworks decontextualise the lived realities of war-affected women and men, stripping
peacebuilding of its transformative capacity. These contested spaces where global peace
agendas clash with local, embodied 8everyday9 experiences of insecurity illustrate this tension
(Hudson, 2021; 2018). This critique led to the 8local turn9 in peacebuilding research (Mac Ginty
and Richmond, 2013; Paffenholz, 2015), which emphasises local agencies, indigenous (local)
practices, and 8everyday9 peace and conflict experiences (Beyene et al., 2024). The top-down
and standardised approaches failed to address context-specific grievances and power dynamics
(Mac Ginty, 2011) and disregard local conflict resolution mechanisms, traditional mediation
practices, and the deeply personal ways communities experience and understand 8everyday9
peace, factors which framed a critical framework of analysis across my empirical chapters.
Extensive literature documents Sri Lanka9s international involvement in post-war
peacebuilding based on hegemonic dominance of politics (Jirasinghe, 2018), in which
economic rebuilding is a primary focus of state-driven peacebuilding efforts (Uyangoda, 2010).
A critical shortcoming in Sri Lanka9s approach to post-conflict recovery is that it promotes a
narrow perspective that fails to capture the holistic dimensions of reconciliation (Pannilage,
2015; Dharmawardhane, 2013). This narrowness is indicative of a deeper structural bias that
equates peace with institutional functionality and state control. Existing literature ascribes this
narrowness to a failure of gender-relational and 8everyday9 peacebuilding approaches,
prioritising institutions over non-state actors and local agents, and thereby, these methods risk
re-inscribing colonial hierarchies rather than dismantling them (Hudson, 2021). In particular,
the privileging of state-centric, masculinised logics of control, such as surveillance and
militarisation over the lived, gendered experiences of communities, reflects the persistence of

31

8gendered coloniality9 in peacebuilding. As a result, holistic peace becomes more about
managing populations than mending ethnic relationships, ultimately undermining the
sustainability and legitimacy of reconciliation on the ground (Ruwanpura, 2017).
3.4.2 The 8Localisation9 of Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka
The evolving landscape of Sri Lankan peacebuilding increasingly turned toward civil
society as a potential catalyst for reconciliation and social transformation (Keethaponcalan,
2022; Kaiser, 2020; Walpita, 2023) by active involvement of societal actors to counterbalance
an intrusive state, and reaching local communities in bottom-up interventions (Jayawardana,
2022; Beyene et. al, 2024). These approaches start locally, addressing 8everyday9 experiences
and needs of conflict-affected populations (Lonergan, 2023) and are more process-oriented,
valuing relationship-building, trust, and social cohesion (Beyene et. al, 2024), including
community-based healing of trauma, local peace committees, and local conflict resolution
practices (Ramsbotham et al., 2011; Beyene et. al, 2024).
Existing literature in Sri Lanka presents a scenario of post-war reconciliation with
political contestation over the efficacy and sustainability of peacebuilding efforts
(Saravanamuttu, 2021; Upuldeniya et al., 2022; Keethaponcalan, 2022). Despite the promise
of localisation as a transformative approach, the inherent tensions between empowerment
rhetoric and the persistent dynamics of political power structures continue to challenge the
fundamental premises of bottom-up peacebuilding strategies. The discourse surrounding
localisation in peacebuilding contexts is not a novel development. The significance of local
contexts, communities, and agencies has been a central theme in reconciliation literature for
approximately twenty years (Keethaponcalan, 2022; Beyene et. al, 2024). International
organisations, including the UN and its partners, have consistently emphasised local
governance, capacity building, and ownership in their theoretical frameworks. However,
incorporation of superficial, centralised peace processes that inadequately address local

32

dynamics remains largely rhetorical rather than substantive in implementation (Gray and
Burns, 2021; Beyene et. al, 2024).
Internationally funded community rehabilitation 9 projects, such as the UN Secretary
General9s Peacebuilding Fund, often struggle to engage local communities. In Mullaitivu and
Kilinochchi, these interventions adopted a top-down approach that overlooked local trauma
experiences and traditional conflict resolution mechanisms (Subedi and Bulathsinghala, 2018).
Families seeking information about disappeared relatives experienced a gap between
theoretical empowerment and practical implementation in bureaucratically and emotionally
distant mechanisms (Kodikara, 2023; Wanigasuriya, 2020). However, there is an emerging
shift to address these limitations in peacebuilding programs across Sri Lanka, prioritising
8everyday9 local dimensions, encompassing contextual specificity, agency, and partnership
dynamics (Nair and Sudevan, 2024; Millawithanachchi, 2020; Weerawardhana, 2019). The
relationship between effective local governance and sustainable peace has long been
acknowledged, and recent scholarship has undertaken more nuanced examinations of this
relationship (ibid., 2024, 2019; Walpita, 2023). Several empirical studies in Sri Lanka suggest
that strategically conceived and effectively administered decentralisation can contribute to
stability through multiple mechanisms: enhanced legitimacy, strengthened accountability,
increased inclusivity, and expanded civic participation (Jirasinghe, 2018).
Literature highlights post-war local community initiatives such as 8shramadana9
(voluntary labour-based construction activities) (Mallawaarachchi, 2020; Jayathilaka and
Ansari, 2019) and women9s organisations, engaged in community dialogue and psychosocial
support, capacity-building, mentoring, educational advancement, and skills development (Nair
and Sudevan, 2024; Brounéus et. al, 2023). These initiatives, however, are contingent upon

9 Rehabilitation projects represent structured interventions designed to support post-war societies by addressing

systemic challenges through external financial and technical assistance. These projects aim to restore social
infrastructure, support economic recovery, and facilitate community healing in regions devastated by prolonged
conflicts. (UN, 2024)

33

sufficient sub-national autonomy and resource control (Jirasinghe, 2018). Critical research
indicates that decentralised war-mitigation potential in Sri Lanka may be compromised by
several factors: local elite capture of resources and power, insufficient administrative
capabilities, and inadequate resource mobilisation (Nair and Sudevan, 2024).
Delays in peacebuilding implementation and constraints in resource allocation impede
post-conflict reconciliation efforts (Wakkumbura, 2021). I concur with Jayawardana (2022)
that these challenges in effective state-community engagement require both enhanced policy
efficiency and strategic deployment of competent human resources. Within the critical
literature, I identify significant disjunctions between local governmental authorities and
grassroots peacebuilding initiatives in Sri Lanka9s war-affected regions, undermining the
sustainability of peacebuilding efforts. Structural disconnections are compounded by a lack of
effective bridging mechanisms and generate long-term negative consequences for
comprehensive reconciliation and social reconstruction. These systemic challenges reveal
deep-rooted institutional barriers that prevent meaningful collaboration between official
governance structures and community-level peace initiatives, hindering genuine, holistic
reconciliation on the ground (Wakkumbura, 2021; Upuldeniya et al., 2022; Nair and Sudevan,
2024; Walpita, 2023).
3.5 Conclusion
The literature on post-war reconciliation in Sri Lanka reveals a landscape marked by
persistent challenges of ethnonationalism, institutional barriers, and deep-seated historical
tensions. Nationalist dynamics continue to impede meaningful peacebuilding efforts, and state
policies often prioritise majoritarian Sinhalese narratives and marginalise minority
experiences, creating significant obstacles to genuine reconciliation. Women occupy a
significant role in this context by strategically navigating nationalist frameworks to redefine
traditional patriarchal narratives, operating within and challenging existing ethnic constraints,

34

innovatively adopting advanced peacebuilding initiatives to gain political visibility and
advocate for community needs. This highlights the importance of understanding 8everyday9
reconciliation as a multi-layered negotiation of identity and healing, and not as a top-down
process. In post-war reconciliation, truth commissions serve as a critical mechanism for
addressing historical trauma and promoting societal healing. Although my research does not
primarily focus on truth commissions in Sri Lanka, I find them significant as a crucial link to
the broader reconciliation process by creating spaces for acknowledging and documenting
collective trauma. International interventions and state-driven reconciliation efforts often fail
to genuinely engage with local cultural practices, historical traumas, and the specific
insecurities of post-conflict communities. This disconnect undermines the sustainability of
reconciliation processes, creating a fundamental challenge in addressing the deep-rooted
divisions that persist in Sri Lankan society.

35

CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY & METHODS
4.1 Chapter Introduction
In this chapter, I will outline the methodology and methods used to explore the challenges
and opportunities within the reconciliation process in post-war Sri Lanka by integrating a
qualitative case study approach focusing on the social, political, and cultural dimensions of
ethnic communities directly involved in the conflict. At the outset, I set out the methodological
approach based on a feminist post-colonial framework that centres on reflections of 8everyday9
experiences of marginalised communities. I will follow up by detailing specific data collection
methods, including remote semi-structured interviews and document analysis from diverse
backgrounds, to provide a comprehensive overview of the data analysis strategy. Finally, I will
offer a reflection on my positionality as a Sri Lankan, Sinhalese researcher, and the ethical
imperatives of conducting research on decolonised knowledge production and amplifying
marginalised voices.
4.2 A Case Study Approach to the Reconciliation Process in Sri Lanka
This research focuses on the opportunities and challenges of the reconciliation process
embedded within complex social and political relationships among Sinhalese, Tamil, and
Muslim communities in Sri Lanka. It aims to understand different perspectives surrounding
the 8everyday9 structural challenges and implications among the majority and minority
communities. I attempt to accomplish these objectives by adopting an inductive, exploratory
methodology within the qualitative case study paradigm.
Lai and Roccu (2019) state that methodology is more to do with strategy that will be
aimed at claims of knowledge about social phenomena of interest, and challenges the
assumption that academic research automatically catalyses 8positive social change9 (Heucher
et. al., 2024) particularly within postcolonial contexts such as in Sri Lanka. Research instituted
through Western epistemological paradigms remains deeply rooted within wider realities of
36

injustice in Sri Lanka (Pradeepkumar, 2023) exploiting local communities to advance abstract
knowledge disregarding localised realities (Jemia, 2021) and fail to dismantle institutional
oppression underlying ethnic marginalisation (Perera-Mubarak, 2013) and reinforce existing
power dynamics (Rafique et al., 2024). Research can illuminate patterns of oppression and
marginalisation in the complex relationship between knowledge production and social
transformation, but does not inherently lead to their resolution (Rafique et al., 2024; Björkdahl
and Selimovic, 2021). The challenge I face lies beyond producing knowledge about narratives
of marginalisation and inequality, and employing my research methodology to actively refute
rather than reinforce existing power dynamics within Sri Lanka.
To this end, I have chosen a feminist post-colonial methodological approach adopting
methods that prioritise experiential knowledge and embodied understanding (Björkdahl and
Selimovic, 2021) that demands a consistent critical reflection on the power dynamics inherent
in knowledge production concerning epistemic violence perpetrated against or through
knowledge systems (Batool and Petrov, 2023.). Throughout my research design, I have
interrogated the power dynamics inherent in knowledge production, reflecting on the critical
ethical dimensions of my investigative process: Who has the legitimate right to represent
others9 experiences? Which voices are amplified, and which remain marginalised within my
research framework? How do the diverse perspectives of my participants actively shape and
co-construct the empirical narrative? By persistently confronting these fundamental questions,
I aim to dismantle traditional research hierarchies that represent an ongoing commitment to
decolonising research practices grounded in post-colonial and critical feminist theoretical
perspectives.
According to Westhues et al. (1999), the qualitative methodology can offer a deeper
understanding of a phenomenon under consideration that is contextualised within complex
processes by surfacing subtle dynamics in operation. On the other hand, quantitative

37

methodologies can assess surface opinions through standardised data-collection instruments
that reduce complex opinions into predefined numeric scales and categories defined by the
researcher but fail to capture nuanced narratives lying behind viewpoints shaped by oppressed
histories (de Souza Minayo, 2017). An open-ended qualitative approach based on semistructured interviews gives control to marginalised citizens over issues discussed, whilst the
analysis builds concepts from the ground up without fragmentation (Westhues et al., 1999).
Through this particular mode of interviewing, voices and experiences of marginalised
women and others have been surfaced by feminists (Reinhartz, 1992). I have applied qualitative
methods capable of providing thick, rich descriptions of personal contexts that shape beliefs
and modes of thinking (Smith and Smith, 2018). I have interviewed experts who describe
everyday experiences of people from different ethnic communities, shedding light on the
insights into challenges and opportunities faced by Tamil and Muslim minorities and the
majority Sinhalese in Sri Lanka that can be ascertained within the reconciliation process and
help explain narratives lying within popular perspectives and misconceptions. In this manner,
qualitative methodology can offer a holistic understanding using personal stories to augment
statistically based data presented in quantitative studies (Mohajan, 2018). In examining postwar reconciliation, I have engaged with the lived experiences and 8everyday9 realities of my
participants and their reflections of local minority citizens on the ground, exploring the
emotional landscape of pain, anger, frustration, and hope (Delatolla et al., 2024) that reveals
the intricate ways emotional experiences are reproduced and negotiated in post-war
environments. Unlike quantitative post-colonial feminist research that seeks to minimise
researcher bias and uncover objective truths, qualitative feminist methodologies embrace
subjectivity as a fundamental analytical lens (Herron, 2023) and actively practice reflexivity,
critically examining how their own perspectives and interpretations shape the research process
(Olmos-Vega et al., 2023). This approach requires nuanced ethical decision-making and an

38

acknowledgement of the often-messy nature of real-world social experiences and practices
(Herron, 2023).
Numerous scholars have applied qualitative methodology approaches to examine ethnic
tensions and interactions in post-war reconciliation and peacebuilding in Sri Lanka. Pieris
(2012) used interviews to surface narratives of prejudice between majority Sinhalese and
minority Tamil youth, uncovering deeper cultural roots behind violence. From field visits
conducted across Sri Lanka, Amarasuriya9s (2010) research found inequalities in higher
education as an abiding grievance among Tamil youth. Perera-Rajasingham (2019), employed
ethnographic methods to chronicle colonial histories of ethnic oppression and resistance
(Amarasinghe, 2024), placing a central value on human stories within complex social divides.
I have adopted a case study design, incorporating a case study analysis on the challenges
and opportunities of the reconciliation process in Sri Lanka. According to Yin (2014), a case
study methodology enables an in-depth, multi-faceted exploration of a contemporary
phenomenon within its real-world context. It is a theoretically informed methodology that can
surface 8everyday9 practices and experiences within local contexts, facilitating the researchers
to observe broader socio-political influences that shape a specific context (Lai and Roccu 2019,
p.73). This methodology is suited for addressing 8how9 and 8why9 questions on drivers of
challenges and opportunities present within the post-war reconciliation process in a specific
social milieu in Sri Lanka. A qualitative approach using interviews in combination with
document analysis of media reports, government publications, NGO communiques, and other
relevant texts can provide thick, rich descriptions of participant perspectives as supporting
material for data triangulation (Mohajan, 2018), situating ethnic dimensions of minorities in
Sri Lanka within the context of reconciliation.

39

4.3 Situating Feminist Critical Theory and Post-Colonial Theoretical Approaches
In academic inquiry, theory and methodology share a profound and symbiotic
relationship fundamental to the generation of knowledge (Reiter, 2017). Theories provide an
intellectual platform for researchers to formulate hypotheses, anticipate potential influences
and implications, and develop valid theoretical approaches towards understanding complex
systems (Bhattacherjee, 2012). According to Smith (2021, p. 42): <[T]heory… helps make
sense of reality. It enables us to make assumptions and predictions about the world in which
we live.= Theories constitute epistemological frameworks that organise perceptual experiences,
categorising analytical priorities, and generating meaningful interpretations of observed
phenomena (Smith, 2021) and translate abstract ideas into actionable research strategies,
helping researchers negotiate uncertainties, reconcile apparent contradictions, and construct
coherent narratives about the world (Jaccard and Jacoby, 2020; Bulmer, 2021). My research
study is informed by feminist critical theory and postcolonial theory, providing complementary
lenses to critically examine the challenges and opportunities of the reconciliation process whilst
interrogating dominant ideological assumptions that perpetuate discrimination, oppression, and
conflict affecting marginalised ethnoreligious minorities in Sri Lanka.
Feminist critical theory emerged from the intersection of feminist thought and the critical
theory tradition (Spivak, 2012; Frost and Elichaoff, 2014), offering viable and practical insights
for analysing ethnic conflicts and grievances in the Global South by centring on the
intersections of gender, colonial legacies, and power relations often understated in mainstream
conflict analysis frameworks (Madhok, 2020; Roberts and Connell, 2016). On the other hand,
complementary perspectives are provided by postcolonial theory to analyse the lingering
contemporary impacts of European colonialism upon formerly colonised societies of the Global
South, focusing upon identity relations, political institutions, knowledge paradigms and
cultural representations (Spivak, 2012; Al‐wazedi, 2020).

40

Feminist critical theory and postcolonial perspectives jointly inform scholarship on
ethnicity, race, indigeneity, and nationalist conflicts focused upon minority and marginalised
groups within divided, postcolonial societies such as Sri Lanka, characterised by legacies of
hierarchies, imposed institutional frameworks, asymmetric power relations and tensions (Ziai
et al., 2020).
I am interested in focusing a post-colonial lens upon the structural limitations that
fundamentally constrain the authentic potential for reconciliation by subjecting reflections of
local experiences to external frameworks of understanding (Silva et al., 2020; SubramaniamNisanka et al., 2021; Upuldeniya et al., 2022). The concept of 8local turn9 offers a nuanced
alternative to linear reconciliation models in existing literature in which reconciliation is not a
simple implementation of external peace templates but a dynamic process of negotiation,
resistance, and transformation (Richmond and Mac Ginty, 2020). Local actors are not passive
recipients of international interventions but active agents who continuously reshape and
reinterpret external frameworks through their own cultural, social, and political contexts (Ejdus
2021). Surpassing traditional gender-centric narratives, feminist critical theory provides an
analytical framework for interrogating the power dynamics underlying ethnic conflict and postwar reconciliation in Sri Lanka (Divakalala, 2024; Obeyesekere, 2023). In my research, I have
adopted the feminist critical theory to study the intersectional experiences of war-affected and
marginalised subaltern Tamil and Muslim communities and explore the systems of power,
inequality, and injustice within the implementation of reconciliation process by deconstructing
the interlocking systems of oppression that have silenced and marginalised minority
populations during prolonged ethnic conflict (Ruwanpura and Mohamed-Saleem, 2025).
Experiences of those positioned on the fringes of both ethnic and gender hierarchies are
examined by feminist critical theory to challenge monolithic narratives of reconciliation
backing existing power structures and colonial legacies of divide and rule (Obeyesekere, 2023).

41

In the Sri Lankan context, this approach allows me to examine how patriarchal power
mechanisms and ethno-nationalist ideologies converge to create multi-layered systems of
exclusion that disproportionately impact women, internally displaced persons, and
economically vulnerable ethnic minorities in marginalised communities (Divakalala, 2023;
Obeyesekere, 2023). This can highlight post-war reconciliation processes negotiated through
masculinist and state-centric approaches (Sonal et al., 2020), ignoring the lived experiences of
those traumatised by prolonged conflict (Jayawardana, 2022; Walpita, 2023; Beyene et al.,
2024). Critical feminist analysis exposes the limitations of top-down reconciliation strategies
that fail to address the fundamental structural inequalities embedded in Sri Lanka9s complex
ethnic landscape (Subedi, 2022; Walpita, 2023; Nair and Sudevan, 2024). Feminist critical
theory provides a powerful framework for centring the agency and resilience of marginalised
communities (Choi, 2021), particularly women and gender-diverse individuals in grassroots
peacebuilding and community healing efforts (Munaweera, 2024).
I have adopted this framework by privileging subaltern narratives and exploring the
intersectional nature of oppression in the empirical data I have collected towards a more holistic
understanding of the reconciliation process focusing on the present-day reconciliation process
through a transformative approach recognising the multiplicity of 8everyday9 experiences and
how power, identity, and historical trauma intersect (Kumar, 2024, Grewal, 2023). I have
challenged the dominant narrative of 8victimhood9 (Krystalli, 2021), highlighting the
sophisticated strategies of resistance (Sonal et al., 2020) and survival adopted by communities
navigating persistent systems of oppression (Daluwatte, 2023). Throughout my analysis, I have
not positioned marginal communities as passive victims, but as active agents of transformation
(Krystalli, 2021). In the post-war reconciliation landscape in Sri Lanka, I have noted the
resilience of women and marginalised groups, and their resistance strategies for political
agency and survival. Through the lens of feminist critical theory, I have viewed these acts of

42

resistance not as isolated, 8dramatic moments9, but as intricate, 8everyday9 practices of
negotiation, survival, and radical world-making (Juncos and Bourbeau, 2022) These are not
simply reactions to oppressive structures; but active reimaginations and reconstructions of
social realities through persistent, creative forms of resistance that challenge dominant
narratives and power dynamics (Kumar, 2024; Sonal et al., 2020). My research foregrounds
the perspectives of citizens from Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim ethnic backgrounds living in
Sri Lanka, supported by academic literature to reach contextual balance against hegemonic
interpretations.
I have adopted the methodology that centres on local narratives (from Sinhalese, Tamil,
and Muslim communities living in Sri Lanka) as sources of wisdom, deliberately moving away
from deficit portrayals, thus shifting the focus of research to recognise them as constructive
participants actively directing the research process (Heltai and Tarsoly, 2024) for
understanding and analysing 8what is happening9, 8why is it happening9 and 8what are the
implications9 in the reconciliation process. However, it is important to note that this research
does not aim to present findings as a definitive explanation for claims of <failure= of the
reconciliation process, nor does it prescribe how reconciliation ought to be implemented by the
state. Instead, I am interested in understanding how local actors identify and ground their
perspectives in 8everyday9 aspects of reconciliation, examining both challenges and
opportunities that have emerged over the past 15 years (2009 – 2024) and the disparities
between existing policies and practices of the formal reconciliation process.
4.4 Data Collection
This research utilises qualitative methods, drawing on insights from published
investigative reports, case studies, as well as interviews with subject matter experts, to critically
examine the opportunities and challenges of Sri Lanka9s post-civil war reconciliation process
in addressing minority grievances and fostering reconciliation since the conflict ended in 2009.

43

The timeline of the research covers the past 15 years (2009 – 2024), from when the official
reconciliation process began, and continues to the year of data collection (2024).
I have conducted 10 remote semi-structured open-ended interviews (see Table 1 below)
with academic researchers, civil society leaders, grassroots activists and government
administrators residing in Sri Lanka with knowledge and expertise related to reconciliation
processes through their professional work. Using the University of Northern British
Columbia9s (UNBC) encrypted Zoom meeting rooms, I adopted purposive and snowball
sampling methods to capture insights from these participants who were willing and data-rich
(Babbie, 2020) experts with relevant proximity to the reconciliation process in Sri Lanka.
Table 1 Breakdown of Interview Participants
Participants

Female Male Total

Academic Researcher

2

2

4

Grassroots Activists

2

1

3

Civil Society Leaders

1

1

2

Government Administrators

1

-

1

Total Participants

6

4

10

The interviews explored the 8everyday9 lived experiences, perceptions and perspectives
of individuals from four distinct and diverse backgrounds on social cohesion, inclusion and
social justice in relation to the existing reconciliation efforts, and invited to offer viewpoints
on existing policies, initiatives and processes aimed at promoting a holistic reconciliation. They
were also requested to offer their insights and recommendations on potential areas for positive
reforms and improvements to advance sustainable peace, mutual understanding and
harmonious coexistence among all communities. Initially, civil society leaders directly
engaged in inter-ethnic reconciliation mediation programs for Tamil and Muslim communities,

44

as well as Sinhalese communities affected by the war, were included to foreground local
minority and majority perspectives on current challenges and opportunities within the
reconciliation process. This was followed by interviewing grassroots activists familiar with
ethnic tensions and grievances, and capable of providing valuable insights into current
grievances, concerns, and perspectives that may be overlooked by external observers and topdown policy approaches. Academic researchers who specialise in post-war reconciliation and
conflict analysis in Sri Lanka were invited to provide interpretative lenses that contextualise
current challenges, spill over effects, and implications. Government administrators directly
involved in crafting previous reconciliation policies were included to offer reflections on the
limitations and opportunities in past institutional and political attempts to redress issues, foster
structural reforms, and share considered opinions for enhancing state-led efforts. Additionally,
the interviews were designed to obtain critical insights from local experts on reconciliation
policies, the militarisation of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, failures of accountability,
and minority political and language rights. Specifically, the interviews provided recent data on
how unresolved historical complaints of disadvantaged Tamils and Muslims concerning
language, land, and development policies have transformed into contemporary drivers of
unrest. Although my participants are formally recognised as subject matter 8experts9, they are
also local actors embedded in and directly affected by the reconciliation process. Rather than
positioning them solely as detached analysts, I approach their narratives as both reflections on
and enactments of the 8everyday9 experiences of reconciliation. Many of these participants,
particularly those from minority communities, shared insights grounded in their own lived
experiences, navigating the 8everyday9 implications, challenges, and opportunities of local
reconciliation initiatives. At the same time, they also reflected on the experiences of other
community members. In this sense, their 8expert status9 is inseparable from their own

45

positionality as individuals who are knowledgeable about, personally engaged in, and also
shaped by the dynamics of 8everyday9 reconciliation on the ground.
In selecting my participants, I explored public websites of government and local activists,
think tanks, and university websites, along with referrals and obtained a gendered balance in
the sample composition. Since the Sri Lankan reconciliation, conflict resolution and
peacebuilding academia is dominated by male voices in scholarly and administrative
categories, I requested referrals of women experts, citing a purposive outreach for recognised
female scholars, activists, and advisors who can help mitigate participant biases in gender.
Representativeness was maintained by obtaining a broad range of accurately documented
perspectives without contamination of researcher bias in ethnic affiliation, locale, class, and
ideological positioning (Sprague, 2016).
First, I reached out to scholars and fieldworkers in Sri Lanka, requesting their voluntary
participation in the study by emailing them. After participants provided their initial consent,
each individual was requested to join in a virtual interview lasting approximately 60 to 90
minutes, scheduled at a time and day of their convenience. Confidentiality and security of the
interviews were maintained by conducting remote sessions exclusively through UNBC9s
licensed student Zoom account with a protected meeting link. During the recording, I reiterated
the contents of the information sheet (See Appendix 1 for Participant Information Sheet),
outlined the objectives and aims of the interview, and proceeded to obtain their verbal consent
(See Appendix 2 for Interview Guide). At the end of each confirmed expert interview, I asked
each participant to recommend 1 to 2 other suitable candidates from their professional
networks, whom they regard as highly knowledgeable about contemporary drivers of the
reconciliation process in Sri Lanka. This referral-based, snowball sampling technique, with the
concurrence of the UNBC Research Ethics Board guidance, allowed efficient expansion of the
pool of relevant participants within the expertise criteria (Noy, 2008). As familiar community

46

members vouched for the research integrity of their trusted peers, this helped mitigate
legitimacy barriers between the subjects and myself in discussing sensitive issues of structural
marginalisation and facilitated insider introductions (Adikaram et al., 2022).
The use of remote interviews gained momentum since the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown,
during which most ethnographic fieldwork and critical feminist data collection efforts were
restricted to online spaces (Howlett, 2022; Lobe et al., 2020; Tremblay et al., 2021). This has
influenced where and how interactions occur with participants, complicating the 8placeness of
ethnography9 (Haverinen, 2015, p.82). My ability to connect 8face to face9 with my research
participants was determined entirely by participants9 willingness to invite me into their
8worlds9 in the cyberspaces created (Howlett, 2022). Digital research methods create a
meaningful interactive space that transcends physical locations (Lobe et al., 2020; Sattler et al.,
2022; Tremblay et al., 2021). Critical feminist research perspectives highlight the
transformative potential of remote interviewing in democratising research participation.
Traditional face-to-face interview methods often restricted participant pools to those with travel
capabilities or proximity to research institutions. The home-based nature of remote interviews
significantly enhanced participant convenience and agency. Thus, I managed to dismantle
geographical barriers for both myself and my participants and conducted remote interviews
within the participants9 chosen environments, affording them a feeling of enhanced control of
the research process, which reduced power differentials and the degree of formality in the
research relationship (Howlett, 2022). Specifically, it allowed me to engage with civil society
leaders and grassroots community activists in Sri Lanka who are made inaccessible by
logistical constraints.
Interview data collected was augmented by 150 published reports, academic journals,
newspaper articles and government policy documents in English, Sinhala and Tamil.
Additionally, data documenting political, economic and cultural discrimination was gathered

47

from political scientists, peace and conflict researchers, Sri Lankan civil society groups and
international human rights organisations. Published reports were obtained through a
combination of online searches across academic databases, think tank repositories, civil society
organisations, direct requests from research participants and collaborating with a research
assistant to conduct secondary research from a number of universities, think tanks, libraries,
and government data repositories to access important policy documents that cannot be
referenced remotely from Canada. Collection and analysis of past investigative reports,
academic analyses, and case studies were carried out by documenting the historical grievances,
the incidence of marginalisation, eruptions of riots, implementation of reconciliation,
transitional justice, and peacebuilding initiatives, both during the war and post-war years.
Systematic identification of relevant investigative reports, academic analyses and case
studies documenting ethnic grievances, reconciliation attempts and risks of renewed tensions
was made by searching online databases such as ScienceDirect, JSTOR, and Google Scholar
using a defined string of keywords associated with the research questions and literature review.
I also made use of the publication repositories of prominent think tanks focused on Sri Lankan
affairs, such as the Centre for Policy Alternatives, Verité Research and the International Centre
for Ethnic Studies, to study their periodic monitoring reports, surveys and field accounts
examining inter-ethnic relations. I explored the websites of the National Peace Council, the
Centre for Human Rights and Research and Women and Media Collective involved in
peacebuilding and mediation, to obtain data from their published reports on outcomes of
community-based reconciliation initiatives. At the conclusion of the remote interviews, I
requested participants to recommend specific investigative reports, surveys and analyses that
they consider relevant to the study. I accessed material with restricted online availability to
enrich my empirical analysis, for instance, unpublished reports of women, gender and gender
disparity, on minority grievances, extremist influences, previous reconciliation attempts, and

48

institutional and political reforms. The data-collecting methods I employed provided highquality primary and secondary data to meet the study goals of exploring the challenges and
opportunities of the current reconciliation process in Sri Lanka.
4.5 Limitations of Methodology and Methods
A key limitation in the qualitative nature of remote interviews and document analysis is
the inability to generalise across contexts. Whilst offering rich, context-specific insights, the
sample size of 10 experts and 150 reports is limited in breadth. The interpretations and
conclusions reached cannot claim to represent all minority viewpoints of reconciliation across
Sri Lanka, with the result that certain regions, religions, classes, and ideological positions may
be compromised. Similarly, my document analysis might have overlooked niche publications
from less 8prominent9 organisations. Notwithstanding the above, I have made a conscious effort
to centre locally published reports and journal articles augmented with academic knowledge
from the Global South.
Due to the constraints of a strict timeline and limited resources as a Master9s student, I
was unable to access a broader range of local citizens who are actively engaged in
reconciliation initiatives in the North and East. This includes war widows, individuals living
with war-related disabilities, youth activists, and other ordinary citizens directly affected by
the war and its aftermath. The online nature of my data collection further limited my ability to
reach these groups, as participation required a degree of digital access, connectivity, and, in
many cases, some level of institutional affiliation and community visibility. As a result, the
representation of the 8everyday9 in this study is necessarily mediated through the perspectives
of participants who were both willing and able to engage in virtual interviews.
Additionally, the snowball sampling I used risked participant referral biases by focusing
on affiliated networks sharing similar opinions. Those likely endorsing substantially differing
perspectives might have been excluded (Leighton et al., 2021). However, I overcame this

49

limitation by requesting my participants to recommend experts not in their peer circles and
carried out purposive outreach with experts known for alternative viewpoints to reach a fair
and acceptable spread of perspectives.
The remote interview format has limitations in reading non-verbal cues virtually. Due to
the sensitive nature of grievances and tensions, a few participants felt reserved to align with
their opinions, and this limited participation contributed to potential 8biases9 10 in the collected
data. Anonymity protocols were employed to mitigate these limitations and help participants
feel comfortable without undue concern for personal implications. Furthermore, in the writeup of results and discussion of the findings, I took great care and sensitivity to ensure how
participant data is presented, particularly around contentious issues, characterisations and
relations among ethnic groups. Safeguards regarding data security, confidentiality, consent,
and avoidance of harm and risks to participants will be elaborated under ethical considerations.
Misrepresentation could have occurred on certain key events due to obscure, disputed, or
lost data over time. Political rivalry might have created bias in sentiments and accounts on
successive administrations9 implementation of the reconciliation process. I have not removed
these biases, but instead, moved to elucidate how the multiplicity of standpoints has emerged
from people9s lived realities by directing my interview questions towards an open sharing of
outlooks without leading participants to reach specific responses. Following reflexive
principles, I have critically examined my own assumptions, framing of questions, choice of
methods, and interpretation of findings filtered through my positionality at every stage of the
research process. By cross-checking responses, my intent was not to capture inconsistencies as
untruths but to understand complex and evolving positions people hold to enrich the quality of

10 Rather than viewing bias in narrow terms as simply a contaminant to objective truth, it was vital to me to

recognise that all people9s perspectives are shaped by their unique experiences, positions, and subjectivities. As
such, biases reflect the complexity of how people see and understand the world around ethnic relations, tensions,
and reconciliation policies in Sri Lanka.

50

data. All contributions of people9s reasoning and contexts were valued rather than defined as
contaminated. This shaped how biases were understood and findings were presented.
Interviewing on ethnic relations carries risks of participants concealing sensitive
information, exaggerating claims, and providing socially desirable responses. I mitigated
potential distortions by using non-leading questions and anonymity protocols. Errors of recall
and memory bias can distort historical events and past policies (Graham et al., 2003), and these
were addressed through cross-checking and corroborating participant evidence against
documented details in published investigative reports and academic analyses in the study.
Where noticeable factual discrepancies were detected between a respondent9s recollection of
key events and policies that conflict with the formal documentation, I made non-critical
probing to uncover rationales for divergent perspectives and interpretations. The investigative
reports and documents provided a crucial data source to complement the insights gained from
the interviews with established details that helped jog respondents9 memories.
4.6 Approach to Data Analysis
I employed a thematic qualitative analysis strategy on the gathered documentary
evidence and interview transcripts that allowed salient themes to emerge inductively through
systematic coding (Terry et al., 2017). Initial open codes captured key points within documents
and interviews relating to grievances, reconciliation attempts, and peacebuilding. Empathy
towards lived grievances was maintained to avoid generalisations entrenching inter-ethnic
divisions (Walsh, 2018). The thematic technique allowed constructive engagement of structural
discrimination on grievances and psychosocial reconciliation visions, and textual triangulation
provided checks against reductionism. A total of 82 codes surfaced from the participant
interview transcripts, and from the initial codes, reconciliation, militarisation, and minority
political and cultural rights were identified as three common themes.

51

The document analysis of investigative reports, academic analyses, case studies, and
insights gained from the interviews provided vital historical and contextual foundations to
situate the challenges faced by minority communities in achieving a holistic reconciliation.
Tracing the patterns of recurrent riots, cultural suppression policies, regional inequalities, and
limitations of reconciliation attempts illuminated the systemic foundations and contextual
shifts underlying episodes of radicalisation and ethnic tensions. The interview data led to upto-date assessments from experts closely monitoring contemporary reconciliatory efforts on
the ground. Strengths and limitations of reconciliation attempts since the end of the war in 2009
were studied to identify unresolved issues by previous interventions. Interview data, documents
and personal reflections offered multi-layered insights on macro-historical discrimination and
limitations of prevailing reconciliation paradigms.
4.7 Ethical Considerations
One of the critical ethical considerations associated with this research is centred on
interviews with participants because these focused on a highly sensitive social and political
issue in Sri Lanka. Open discussions on experiences of marginalisation, oppression, post-war
peacebuilding and reconciliation could have triggered psychological risks of re-traumatising
participants through recalling distressful memories of conflicts and violence, discrimination,
wartime displacement, and evoking deep-seated fears and grief over lost loved ones (Alessi
and Kahn, 2023). On the other hand, not engaging with ethnic minority participants to chronicle
experiences of violence will keep vital data invisible and not justifiably address critical gaps in
dominant historical narratives (Walsh, 2018).
Involvement in a politically sensitive study can endanger participants if confidentiality
is breached (Knott and Kostovicova, 2024). Sri Lanka9s Public Security Ordinance has enabled
arrests of activists for disaffection charges, thus heightening risks in conducting this research
(Human Rights Watch, 2022). Internationally recognised principles of ethical research were

52

upheld at every stage, safeguarding participant privacy through confidential storage of
recordings and transcripts under coded identifiers. Following the guidelines of the University
of Northern British Columbia9s Ethics Review Board (2023) and the Canadian Interagency
Advisory Panel on Research Ethics (Government of Canada I.A.P. on R.E., 2024), all interview
data were strictly anonymised. Remote interview links and recordings were used to facilitate
data privacy laws following British Columbia9s Personal Information Protection Act (2024)
and UNBC9s Research Ethics Board policies applied to threats of surveillance.
I was also aware of ethical risks for myself as a Sri Lankan Sinhalese researcher, for
critically examining highly sensitive issues of ethnic marginalisation and violence in Sri Lanka.
I managed to mitigate some of these concerns through regular debriefings with my research
supervisor.
4.8 Positionality
My thesis deviates from an impersonal, objective stance traditionally expected in
academic discourse in maintaining distance between the researcher and the researched, mainly
because, during my interviews, this professional distance was untenable to maintain.
My positionality as a Sri Lankan Sinhalese, international studies researcher affiliated
with a Canadian university was shaped by my coming of age during the final decade of the
civil war. Growing up in the majority community, yearning for peace amidst widening divides,
I was faced with complex self-identities and accountabilities. Navigating tense ethnic ruptures
as a child, with many classmates of ethnic minorities disappearing from school, imprinted in
me an early bewilderment regarding the challenges of coexistence, and seeded a calling to
make sense of the lived experience of the post-war period through later academic learning.
Pursuing higher education in the Global North awakened me to internalised worldviews that
normalise ethnic hierarchies despite oppression back home. Learning alternative paradigms of
pluralism and minority rights prompted an acknowledgement of my own socialisation to

53

remain silent amid injustices in the post-war realities. However, it prompted a reflexive reexamination of unearned privileges within inherited power structures in Sri Lanka that sustain
the marginalisation of minority ethnic and religious groups (Reid et al., 2018). This <insideroutsider= positioning created complex relational dynamics, trust building, and disclosure
during remote interviewing on sensitive political issues with Tamil and Muslim civil society
leaders (Türkmen, 2023). My physical distance from contemporary ground realities posed
credibility barriers to adequately grasp nuanced descriptions of obstacles to reconciliation, and
insider partiality defensiveness in confronting necessary structural changes to relieve minority
grievances. I am only conversant in English and Sinhala, and this limitation risks linguistic
alienation of Tamil participants; therefore, I have made upfront transparency on my
shortcomings during this research, and appropriate participant guidance was made in direct
interviews to ensure accurate elevation of narratives, avoiding distorted accounts. I have
consistently strived to empower marginalised voices to guide analysis in line with the
axiological imperative (Türkmen, G., 2023).
Nevertheless, I maintain that an outsider analysis of a protracted civil war, without
ongoing anchoring through relationships and accountability to those who bore its trauma, risks
misrepresenting ground realities. Furthermore, I am a remote researcher encountering distinct
challenges in fostering empathy and trust with minority communities in Sri Lanka who have
endured severe emotional, physical, and political traumas, as well as violent majoritarian
supremacists and terrorist organisations such as the LTTE. However, I can utilise scholarship
privileges to trace pathways through truth, forgiveness, and freedom with those still fighting to
transform post-war conflicts into lasting peace back home. My positionality demands that
before acquiring any academic capital, research relations should culminate in building trust,
and research goals must follow the communities9 self-determined paths to reconciliation.

54

4.9 Conclusion
My research employs a critically reflexive qualitative methodology to explore the
complexities of post-war reconciliation in Sri Lanka, and I have adopted a feminist postcolonial participatory approach to challenge traditional research hierarchies and centre
historically marginalised local narratives in academic discourse. By combining remote semistructured interviews of 10 experts, including academic researchers, civil society leaders,
grassroots activists, and former government administrators, with an extensive review of 150
published reports and documents, I constructed a framework for understanding reconciliation
dynamics. My research design was underpinned by a commitment to ethical considerations and
methodological reflexivity by acknowledging the political sensitivity and potential risks of retraumatisation inherent in studying ethnic conflicts, and my thematic analytical approach
reinforced grounded, inductive research, facilitating themes to emerge organically from the
data, respecting the complexity of participants9 lived experiences and the evolving nature of
reconciliation efforts. Limitations of my methodology include the challenges of generalising
from a relatively small sample size, potential sampling biases, and the complexities of remote
interviewing. Overall, my research process embodies a broader epistemological commitment
to decolonising knowledge production, challenging hegemonic narratives, and creating spaces
for marginalised voices to articulate their own experiences of conflict, trauma, and
reconciliation.

55

CHAPTER 5: RECONCILIATION POLICIES: <FILTERED TRUTHS AND FAILED
PROMISES=
5.1 Chapter Introduction
In post-war Sri Lanka, the ongoing reconciliation process has faced challenges related to
understanding, implementation, and trust. Since 2009, numerous commissions, task forces, and
institutions have been established by the Sri Lankan state to facilitate the official reconciliation
process (see Chapter 2). Two central documents in this respect are the LLRC report of 2011
and the CTF report of 2016, identified by my research participants, due to the focus on mass
testimonials and truth-telling mechanisms, and creating platforms for the marginalised.
Drawing on empirical evidence, I explore the significant disparities between the official
reconciliation policies and how state and non-state actors conceptualise and approach
reconciliation in the post-war landscape, highlighting a fundamental disconnect between topdown governmental initiatives compared to grassroots community experiences, creating a
polygonal narrative of reconciliation. I then critically examine the implications and impacts of
the official truth commissions and policy documents, and provide a comprehensive framework
for addressing post-war reconciliation on the ground.
5.2 Navigating Disparities in Sri Lanka9s Reconciliation Process
5.2.1 Widespread Divergence in Understanding Reconciliation
One of the key narratives echoed by my participants was that the concept of
8reconciliation9 is challenging to define conclusively in the Sri Lankan context. Gibson (2004,
p. 12) situates this dilemma in the existing peacebuilding literature:
<The problem with reconciliation is not that it is devoid of content; the problem is that
reconciliation is such an intuitively accessible concept that everyone is able to imbue
it with her or his own distinct understanding=.
I began my analysis by exploring and deconstructing the localised understanding of
reconciliation and how it is perceived in post-war Sri Lanka, given that reconciliation is a

56

borrowed term from Western-centric post-war IR scholarship introduced by both Western and
some local actors when peace talks were initiated on the ground level (Herath, 2018). Academic
Researcher 829 points out that many scholars in Sri Lanka faced the formidable task of
interpreting and translating this <broad, western-centric and context-driven concept= into the
two national languages: in Sinhala as <ⷁ솅ත귒සන뇊½ා¾ය= [prathisandhānaya11] and in Tamil
<நÿைி«க闍கï” [nalliṇakkam12] (as cited in translated LLRC documents by CPA, 2012).
Academic Researcher 849 explained that after the civil war, it became challenging to
communicate the concept and process of reconciliation to people deeply polarised against each
other, and the <whole process of reconciliation seemed unfamiliar=. Academic Researcher 849
points to the definitional lapse:
<Without defining reconciliation in a proper way, the government has gone ahead
embarking upon a reconciliation process by focussing [only] on a few preliminary
requirements that can be incorporated in a proper definition of reconciliation.=
A common issue that is noticeable in the two key official reconciliation policy
documents, LLRC report (2011) and the CTF report (2016), is that neither have attempted to
define reconciliation explicitly, but instead loosely define the 8reconciliation process9 as an
endeavour to (LLRC, 2011, p. 25),
<Focus on the causes of conflict, its effect on the people, and promote national unity,
so that all citizens of Sri Lanka, irrespective of ethnicity or religion could live in dignity
and a sense of freedom and identify mechanisms for restitution to the individuals whose
lives have been significantly impacted by the conflict.=
Specifically, the LLRC9s (2011) documentation emphasises several key antecedents of
reconciliation such as the intentions of addressing root causes of conflict (8.141 p.308),
acknowledging the impact of the ethnic conflict on the population (9.184 p.388), promoting
national unity across ethnic and religious lines (1.7 p.25), ensuring dignity and freedom for all

11 Although this word is directly translated to <reconciliation= or <reunification= in English, in popular culture it

is now often used in contexts related to bringing people or groups together (especially political parties) after a
conflict or disagreement.
12 good harmony or good agreement.

57

citizens and identifying mechanisms of restitution for those affected by the civil war (5.6
p.174).

Similarly, the CTF report advances this conceptualisation by emphasising the

transformative potential of reconciliation, as the <transformation of challenges of violation
and impunity into an opportunity for meaningful reconciliation and national unity= (1.p. I),
explicitly recognising that <unity in diversity, respect for and protection of the multiple
identities of all Sri Lankans is fundamental to meaningful reconciliation= (5. p. X). This
progression in policy framing reveals a subtle shift from the LLRC9s focus on addressing
historical grievances and promoting broad national unity to the CTF9s more nuanced approach
that explicitly acknowledges the importance of 8preserving9 and 8respecting9 diverse identities
within the reconciliation process. Therefore, it can be concluded that based on the intentions
of the LLRC (2011) report and the CTF9s (2016) reconciliatory mechanisms, reconciliation in
Sri Lanka can be expected to break the cycle of violence by preventing the use of past
grievances as seeds for renewed conflict, consolidating peace, and encompassing all
expectations of peacebuilding including transitional justice and post-war economic
development (Tennakoon, 2016).
Grassroots Activist 829 contends that since 2009, the concept of 8national unity9 within
reconciliation has become a mainstream discourse in Sri Lankan politics. A survey conducted
in 2020 by the Sri Lanka Barometer on how Sri Lankans perceive reconciliation reveals that
only 38% of respondents identify it as 8some form of national unity9 (2021, p. 77). The
fragmentation in understanding becomes particularly problematic when examining the broad
definition9s implementation implications and outcomes, and raises questions about the
meaning and implications of 8national unity9 in the current reconciliation process. Academic
Researcher 829 critically notes that the overarching emphasis on 8national unity9 has effectively
<overshadowed the need to address specific grievances= by oversimplifying the diverse needs

58

and expectations of post-war reconciliation. Academic Researcher 849 offered a personal
experience highlighting the varied interpretations:
<During a survey that I was a part of [a team] collecting data about the level of needing
reconciliation in 2022, many different local citizens [away from the war-affected areas]
had different understandings on the ground…many thought reconciliation means
developing the North and East, others thought that it means overall peace in Sri Lanka
by addressing current political insecurities... some also said that reconciliation is [to
become] a developed country=.
A cross-country survey conducted by the CPA (2013, p.9), further illustrates a lack of a proper
understanding of reconciliation:
<Participants had limited knowledge about reconciliation and its objectives… one
respondent from the Killinochchi district in the Northern Province specifically noted
that there was inadequate awareness, and most people in the Northern Province did
not understand the reconciliation process.=
In war-affected areas such as Killinochchi, having borne the brunt of the conflict, a lack
of 8awareness of reconciliation9 has led to the perpetuation of feelings of marginalisation and
hinders the intended healing process. Moreover, Academic Researcher 839 noted that many
ordinary citizens consider reconciliation as a 8political slogan9 which has led to
8misconceptions and scepticism9 (discussed in Chapter 8). For instance, during ethnographic
research conducted by Silva (2018, pp. p.1078-80), one Sinhalese respondent described
reconciliation as nothing but an <agenda by the international community to divide the country=,
whilst a Tamil respondent dismissed reconciliation as consisting of a set of 8bogus promises9
on the cultivation of trust between the government and its citizens in post-war Sri Lankan
society. Academic Researcher 849further points out that in nearly fifteen years of discourse on
reconciliation, this 8deficit of trust has still not been addressed9. Academic Researcher 819
provides an insight into this fundamental challenge:
<We don9t have an organic definition of reconciliation. That9s a major challenge.
Because we can9t say that people have really understood the meaning of reconciliation
in order to engage in the process. So, it comes [across] as a kind of a parachute
concept=.

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The lack of an 8organic definition9 point to a fundamental void between top-down,
externally driven peace initiatives and local realities. My participants claimed that a 8liberal
peace model9 that international actors and states have systematically imposed failed to account
for the local grassroots and civil society peacebuilding practices (Adhira and Triasari, 2024;
Subramaniam-Nisanka et al., 2021). Academic Researcher 819 critically views the liberal
peacebuilding paradigm, which <prioritises technocratic solutions [such as setting up formal
reconciliation committees and oversight bodies] instead of addressing deep-rooted societal
issues in Sri Lanka=, giving sufficient attention to the understanding and acceptance of the
reconciliation process at the grassroots level. These confusions in the application of the
reconciliation process have led to an abiding dissatisfaction, and many feel that reconciliation
is not achieved and that the process has reached a stalemate (Kapur, 2024; Silva, 2018; CPA,
2024).
Civil Society Leader 819 points out that <different understandings [of reconciliation] held
by various stakeholders are reflected in the diversity of replication of policies=, which
negatively contributes to the overall effectiveness of the process. This highlights a pertinent
fact that dissonance of understanding has been prevalent at the grassroots levels for nearly a
decade (Silva, 2018, p.1078). Academic Researcher 839, Grassroot Activists 819 and 829 all
point out that even in 2024, diverse interpretations of reconciliation persist. Public Opinion on
Reconciliation in Sri Lanka Survey (CPA 2024 p. 4), claimed that there is a 8renewed grassroots
interest in reconciliation9 and Sri Lanka Barometer Public Opinion Survey (2021, p. 80) stated
that <Sri Lankans continue to recognise the importance of reconciliation by expressing a
consistently strong demand for it=. These reports, however, do not sufficiently capture the
diverse ways in which people understand and interpret the concept. Instead, they primarily
present broad statistical categories reflecting how the majority 8views9 reconciliation, thereby
overlooking the nuanced and varied interpretations that exist across different communities.

60

This results in significant omissions in both academic literature and policy documents.
Academic Researcher 839 further highlights that without a comprehensive understanding of
these different interpretations, interventions risk being 8disconnected from local realities9, as
they may not resonate with the diverse ways in which different communities and individuals
approach the current reconciliation process.
One of the most striking deficiencies in the reconciliation process is the unavailability
of important reconciliation reports and surveys in both Sinhala and Tamil languages. A survey
conducted by the CPA (2013, p.12) noted that,
<Only a few respondents were aware that the final LLRC report has been made public.
This is to be expected given that the translations of the [LLRC] report in Sinhala and
Tamil have not been made available by the Government and official Government copies
of the report exist only in English=.
This shortcoming raises a fundamental question: 8Why has a national report of such
importance not been made available in the national languages (Sinhala and Tamil) in Sri Lanka,
where only 23.8% of the total population is fluent in English (EF, 2024)9? This glaring neglect
by the government has led to the exclusion of a large proportion of the population from a
meaningful engagement with the reconciliation process and has contributed to a reinforcement
of elitism and created a moral discrepancy between policymakers and local citizens. Grassroots
Activist 829 contends that these issues collectively point to a 8systemic failure9 that affected the
government9s approach to reconciliation. Based on my empirical data, it becomes clear that the
government has failed to 8acculturate9 the concept of reconciliation and situate it within Sri
Lanka9s multi-ethnic society in a manner that preserves its original intentions. Grassroot
Activist 829 and Civil Society Leader 819 further elaborate that instead of promoting a direct
dialogue between the government and the war-affected civil society members, <vital aspects of
the dialogue have been delegated to external interlocutors such as NGOs= that has led to a
misinterpretation of key objectives of reconciliation, confusion of implementational
methodologies and processes of delivery at the grassroots level. The lack of a concrete and
61

systematic approach to disseminating knowledge about reconciliation has compromised the
process's greater objectives from the outset, leading to fatigue and scepticism (Kapur, 2024;
Perera and Ranasinghe, 2024). Government Official 819, noted that,
<We9ve [participated in] a lot of workshops and seminars, but there9s no [consistent]
strategy linking these activities to the broader goals of reconciliation…[It9s] like we are
box ticking [without moving forward].=
The characterisation of efforts as 8box ticking9 suggests that fulfilling formal
requirements has taken precedence over achieving substantive reconciliation outcomes on the
ground by the State, revealing a perfunctory implementation (Åkebo and Bastian, 2021). Civil
Society Leader 829 also adds to this sentiment,
<In our area [ Jaffna], we9ve had three different NGOs and some government programs
running workshops on reconciliation, but no one seemed to be [aware] of what
[exactly] the others are doing. This is a case of filtered truth and failed promises…=
The broader systemic issues of coordination and communication among various
reconciliation actors as well as inefficient use of resources, create confusion and fatigue among
target communities (Gunasekara, 2023), and the absence of a systematic strategy and initiatives
has contributed to diminishing engagement in reconciliation activities on the ground.
Nevertheless, this void has fostered spaces for community-driven interpretations and
approaches to reconciliation through centring the 8everyday9 understandings and can therefore
be understood as a response to this vacuum of state-led reconciliation initiatives. The
8everyday9 here represents the lived spaces of routine interactions where reconciliation is
experienced, interpreted, and practised through routine interactions and shared practical
purposes. This form of 8everyday9 reconciliation manifests wherever local communities
engages in regular, repeated interactions through shared practical purposes into sustained,
organic processes of relationship-building that develop their own momentum and meaning. It
is where reconciliation is lived, felt, and practised, whether it is complementing, challenging,
or even creating alternatives to formal reconciliation frameworks. Grassroots Activist 829 posits

62

that, <It has created a perfect environment for local resilience for people to develop their own
organic understanding of what reconciliation means to them.= Therefore, the gaps in the
8formal reconciliation programs9 have accommodated these open spaces for community
resilience and innovation, serving as microcosms of reconciliation where trust is built
incrementally through these repeated interactions and shared goals (Wickramasinghe, 2021;
Perera and Ranasinghe, 2024). For example, in the Northern Province, women9s cooperatives
have emerged, allowing women of all ethnicities to collaborate on economic projects whilst
simultaneously addressing inter-community tensions through regular dialogue. These have
redefined reconciliation through practical economic cooperation, demonstrating how local
communities interpret reconciliation through the lens of shared economic prosperity and daily
interaction (ILO, 2024; Norad, 2017). One notable example is the Mullaitivu Women
Development Co-op Society, that produces and markets traditional handicrafts, creating both
economic opportunities and spaces for inter-ethnic relationship building (ILO, 2024)
representing how

communities

develop locally-grounded understandings

of what

reconciliation means in practice through the necessity of working together for mutual benefit
(Raheem, 2024; Deane, 2021; Walpita, 2023).
An apparent contradiction that surfaced through discussions with my participants was
that the Sri Lankan government9s praxis of 8reconciliation9 differs from its public
proclamations. Academic Researcher 839 noted that, instead of addressing the pertinent
reconciliatory measures recommended by the LLRC report, the state has mainly focused on
<economic restructuring, particularly in the war-affected North and East=, neglecting crucial
requirements of reconciliation such as addressing grievances at the grassroots and fostering
inter-ethnic trust (Höglund and Orjuela, 2013). My participant points out that without tackling
the substantive and <challenging tasks of reconciliation, the government has sidestepped from
critical aspects such as addressing human rights violations, political rights of minorities, and

63

redressing past injustices=. The Mahinda Rajapaksa government proposed a strategy centred
on constructing modern infrastructure, including highways and expressways, in an attempt to
double the national per capita income (Venugopal, 2018, p. 13). Justifying this approach,
President Rajapaksa at the inauguration of a new expressway in 2011 said (Daily Mirror, 2011,
quoted in Venugopal, 2018, p. 13),

<Separatist tendencies will fade away when we have better road connectivity between
the North and the South so that people from the North and people from the South are
able to move both ways freely, that can cultivate interracial harmony and can also lead
to mutual economic benefits=.
This rhetoric was singled out by Academic Researcher 849, to illustrate a 8political
strategy to create images of future economic prospects9, in the minds of a larger section of the
population who have been hard-pressed by financial difficulties as a result of the war, and to
downplay the economic and social disintegration and accompanying psychological trauma
experienced by the civilian population of the war-ravaged North and the East. Relegation of
critical imperatives of the reconciliation process from the government9s post-war development
agenda resulted in a failure to gain public support for it (Venugopal, 2018). According to
Academic Researcher 839, the citizens of Northern Province expected the government to
8address wartime grievances9 as the state9s top priority, whilst the government9s development
plan for the region primarily emphasised infrastructure projects. Civil Society Leader 829 points
out that since 2019, they have observed a <decrease in government-sponsored reconciliation
events in the country compared to the [previous] years after the war,= and this has impacted
multiple dimensions of community participation and perception (Subramaniam-Nisanka,
2021). Reduction in organised reconciliation events has created a vacuum in formal spaces for
inter-community dialogue and engagement, affecting communities that previously relied on
government-sponsored platforms for cross-cultural interaction and understanding and
contributed to an alienation of citizens from the broader reconciliation process (Subramaniam-

64

Nisanka, 2021; Sritharan, 2022; Silva et al., 2020; Kanagarathnam, 2019; Millawithanachchi,
2020)
5.2.2 Gaps in Current Reconciliation Processes
Many of my participants have identified the lack of access to witness testimonies from
the two recorded public truth hearings, LLRC (2010) and CTF (2016), which created an
inability to ascertain the manner in which evidence was gathered and recorded, interpretations
made by the officials who conducted the hearings, and specific steps taken to redress
grievances. Civil Society Leader 819 notes that these deficiencies led to <substantial gaps in
understanding what the local communities truly expected from a reconciliation process=.
In 2010, the LLRC received 5,000 written and 1,000 oral statements covering the
militarisation of civilian land, missing and disappeared relatives, and other discriminatory
offences committed against minorities during the war. These were recorded from a diverse
group of individuals and organisations, including public representatives, residents of conflictaffected regions, and non-governmental and international organisations. Field visits and
consultations with various national and international bodies were conducted to corroborate
many of the claims. The Commission conducted visits to 12 districts outside Colombo,
including all the war-torn areas in the Northern and Eastern provinces, and covered some
Southern districts where large numbers of Tamil, Muslim, and Sinhalese people came to testify
(LLRC, 2011). Some of these witnesses were turned away for unknown reasons, but the
testimonies that were heard and documented challenged the notion that the conflict had truly
ended. In order to maintain transparency of the proceedings, the commission invited the general
public and the media as independent witnesses (Tennakoon, 2016). However, the LLRC9s
official website, which previously hosted written submissions and English translations of field
transcripts, was found to be inactive during my data collection phase. The unavailability of the
official website was noted by Höglund (2019), who reported its inactivity since 2019.

65

Another Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CTF) was established in 2016 to gather
public inputs on transitional justice and reconciliation with an updated perspective (CTF,
2016). CTF consisted of an 11-person team representing the ethnic composition of the nation
and collaborated with 15 regional commissions to conduct hearings across all provinces. The
Commission received 7,000 submissions from victims who shared their experiences in both
the violence they endured and the challenges they faced in seeking justice and reconciliation
throughout the seven years since the end of the war (CTF, 2016).
Unlike the LLRC, which made available edited testimonials to the public, the CTF made
no written testimonials13 accessible to the public. Academic Researcher 839 noted that
8inaccessibility of transcriptions of the testimonials9 and the apparent 8lack of follow-through9
in maintaining public access to these records are an obstruction to sustaining the relational
aspects of the overall reconciliation process. Commenting on the accuracy and completeness
of testimonials in the LLRC, Grassroots Activist 829 posits that:
<A lot of important information was missing in the transcribed records… They did not
include transcripts in peoples9 own words in the reports. We made such a request to the
LLRC commission when we gave our testimonies but they didn9t care. Years later, we
come to learn that the testimonials are missing.=
The absence of testimonies in 8people9s own words9 in the official reports represents a
specific form of structural violence that effectively silences voices and experiences. Currently,
available evidence representing local grassroots perspectives can be found paraphrased without
direct transcripts of testimonials of the affected individuals themselves (LLRC, 2010; CTF,
2016). This systematic exclusion of direct testimonies has created a gap in the documentation
of the reconciliation process, affecting both the descriptive circumstances of the
implementation of reconciliation initiatives and a historical understanding of the post-war

13 The CTF report9s Appendices lists the number of testimonials received without including any actual

testimonial text. During my interview with Grassroot Activist 829, they mentioned that written testimonials were
accessible in the past, but they were uncertain about current access or who might have a copy.

66

period of Sri Lanka (Chandrashekar, 2019). Furthermore, I can bring to light the time-based
dimension of this issue as discussed by my participant, where the discovery of missing
testimonials occurred 8years later9, pointing to a lapse in institutional accountability and a lack
of transparency in the ongoing reconciliation process (Chandrashekar, 2019; Meegaswatta,
2020).
Many of my participants spoke about the importance of including directly quoted
testimonials within an official policy. First-hand accounts are an irreplaceable historical record
that prevents denial and revisionism whilst centring the experiences of those most impacted
(Kochanski, 2020; Bakiner, 2015). Direct testimonials transform abstract policies into deeply
human documents that capture both individual and collective trauma in ways that third-person
summaries cannot achieve (Kochanski, 2020). First-hand testimonies serve as vessels of
memory that allow both perpetrators and the broader society to truly grasp the human impact
of past violations, and incorporating direct quotes helps prevent the sanitisation and
bureaucratisation of suffering that occur in purely procedural documents (Bakiner, 2015;
Posner, 2008). When policies include the actual voices of survivors saying 8This is what
happened to me9 and 8This is what I witnessed9, it creates the ability to envision and feel a more
just future by fully acknowledging past harms (Posner, 2008). Academic Researcher 849 posits
that when policies exclude direct testimonials, they risk producing the truth without capturing
the equally vital 8narrative truth9 essential for genuine reconciliation within Sri Lanka.
Testimonials within official policies help bridge the gap between top-down and bottom-up
approaches to peacebuilding. When policies incorporate the actual voices of affected
communities, it helps prevent a liberal peace trap where reconciliation becomes a technical
exercise divorced from local realities and needs (Mac Ginty, 2015). This 8ignorance9,
highlighted by Grassroots Activist 829 aligns with another common theme surfacing from my
empirical analysis as a manifestation of a marked disinterest and disregard by the state for

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addressing grievances. Institutional dismissal of community voices cannot be condoned,
considering the need for the preservation of historical memory in the reconciliation process
(Hettiarachchi, 2016; Rambukwella, 2012) as Civil Society Leader 819 highlights:
<It is important to record these testimonials... It9s more than lending a hearing to
people9s issues – it9s a recording of memory. Memories [are]very important to the
whole [reconciliation] process…=
Public availability of testimonials serves as a cornerstone of truth-seeking efforts, which are
integral components of reconciliation (Höglund, 2019). When these become inaccessible, it
casts doubts on the authenticity of the records, and creates a significant void in the collective
understanding of the conflict9s impact on individuals and communities severely hampering the
ability of society to grasp the full scope and depth of the suffering endured by people on account
of the war (Davis, 2022; Bakiner, 2015). Civil Society Leader 829 speaks about the perceptions
of the young who did not experience the conflict first-hand:
<Younger generations who did not directly experience the conflict rely on these records
to understand their history and the experiences of their [elders]… [Absence of records]
creates a gap in understanding that can lead to a disconnect [between generations]
and a potential resurgence of unresolved tensions in the future=.
The intergenerational aspect of one9s history is crucial for sustaining long-term
reconciliation efforts and preventing the recurrence of conflict (Davis, 2022). Grassroot
Activist 819 posits that, <this removal of public access to testimonials can be seen as a form of
historical erasure, intentional or not…=, and Civil Society Leader Participants (819 and 829)
state that this can lead to <silencing the voices of victims and survivors, re-traumatising [them
by] denying public acknowledgement [of their experiences]=. Participants highlighted that
many of the official narratives on reconciliation are 8coloured with military victories9, and very
little space is reserved for people who have suffered and are still suffering. Legitimate questions
can be raised about who has the right to decide which stories are preserved and made
accessible, and which are not, leading to broader debates about the politics of memory and the
power dynamics inherent in shaping historical narratives within the post-war society (Silva,
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2018; Thiranagama, 2013). Reconciliation policies should prioritise amelioration of emotional
implications and psychological impacts for people in war-affected regions, although the state
has mainly identified economic development and provision of infrastructure as the critical areas
to be addressed (Hettiarachchi, 2016).
Specific instances of state censorship on the ground are highlighted in masking relevant
factual data in transcripts and documents, and limitations imposed on accessibility
(un)intentionally impeding the vital processes of collective memory formation that are germane
to the success of national reconciliation in shaping social identity and cohesion
(Keethaponcalan, 2019; Tissainayagam, 2012; Seoighe, 2017; Höglund and Orjuela, 2013).
Academic Researcher 849 points out that issues of state censorship <raise serious questions
about transparency and accountability= within the officially published reconciliation policies.
The lack of transparency can easily lead to suspicions of political manipulation or cover-ups,
undermining the credibility of the process and its outcomes and thereby widening the trust
deficit between the minority communities and the state, which is an overarching challenge
within the current overall reconciliation process (Fernando, 2019). My participants note that
due to a lack of transparency, minority community members often downplay the relevance of
state commissions with particular reference to their composition, consisting of politicians and
scholars chosen by the Sri Lankan authorities. The government facilitates impositions from
higher authorities, under the presumption that they know what is best without the need for
much dialogue and consultation with those actually affected by the war. As a result, findings
made and conclusions arrived at by commissions of reconciliations often fall short of fully
exposing the severity of the government9s actions and shortcomings (Chandrasekar, 2015).
My participants also pointed out inadequate mandates, lack of witness protection,
insufficient independence, and failure to meet global standards for domestic commissions of
inquiry. Academic Researcher 849 highlighted issues with the testimony collection process

69

itself: <many witnesses were not given the opportunity to be heard, while others who did testify
found the time allocated for their testimonies insufficient=. The Commission allowed
politicians, army personnel, and government officers living in Colombo a reasonable amount
of time (about 45 minutes) for each testimony. Tamils and Muslims in war-affected areas,
however, were typically given only about 15 minutes each to testify, bearing witness to the
commission9s skewed priorities (Venugopal, 2011). As a result, crucial information was often
omitted from the official testimonials, compromising the comprehensiveness and accuracy of
the LLRC records (Venugopal, 2011; Höglund, 2019). Höglund9s (2019) study further
revealed substantial gaps in the available LLRC records, with biases in the dataset such as
gender disparity (male testimonies outnumbered female testimonies by a ratio of 3:1, despite
women being disproportionately affected by certain aspects of the conflict.
Academic Researcher 849 highlighted that there were many occasions where the
Commissioners undermined the credibility of witnesses9 testimonies. Instead of listening and
recording the accounts, they had frequently questioned the validity of the grievances presented,
which constituted a tendency to disregard the core of witnesses9 statements (Chandrasekar,
2015). The LLRC9s approach to recording testimonies of women has been heavily criticised
for a lack of concern in maintaining sensitivity and understanding during the delivery of their
narratives (Chandrasekar, 2015; Höglund, 2019). Female testimonial witnesses were
interrupted and denied the space to share their experiences with discretion or in their own
preferred way (Höglund, 2019). For example, during an LLRC testimonial hearing 14 at the
District Secretariat in Kilinochchi on September 18, 2010, a mother stepped forward to share
her wartime experience and recounted the disappearance of two of her sons and maintained
that two other sons had been killed. During the course of her testimony, she also wanted to give

14I obtained a copy of the written witness testimonials from Dr. Kristine Höglund (Uppsala University,

Sweden), that had been preserved offline by a research assistant in 2014. Other official media reports and audio
.
transcripts can be found on an unofficial archives website at https://llrclk.wordpress.com/

70

an account of how she too sustained bodily injuries, but at this point, one of the commissioners
overseeing the testimony stopped her continuing with her story (LLRC, 2010) This encounter
illustrates the arbitrarily imposed closure of the flow of a narrative that could have contained
factors relevant to the representation of genuine grievances. Part of this narrative is produced
below (LLRC, 2010):
W115: I have 7 children-4 boys. Of the 4 boys 2 boys are missing. 1 is married and
has 3 children and those children are also with me. I am the supporting member
of the family.
C16: What happened to your (2) sons?
W1. I am also short of hearing because of shell attack. There are shell pieces still in
my …
C: No, ask her what happened to her sons?
The tendency to question the credibility of testimonies and attempts at downplaying the
severity of reported incidents suggests a predetermined narrative that the commission sought
to abide by. This type of approach compromises the truth-seeking mandate of the reconciliation
process and erodes mutual trust among the commission officials, the victims, and their family
members (Chandrasekar, 2015; Höglund, 2019). Grassroots Activist 819 commented that
empathetic listening to the grievances was an integral part of understanding and demonstrating
intentions of genuine reconciliation: <If the commission cannot do that, then, its core premise
as a truth commission is invalid=. Although the CTF adopted a more democratic approach in
gender-specific orientation for recording female witnesses9 accounts, with thoughtful
consideration to gender-related concerns and participation of women within the truth hearing
recordings, (CTF, 2016) Academic Researcher 819 notes that even in 2024 there are persistent
gaps in meaningful female participation within reconciliation processes, despite formal
establishment of gender-sensitive mechanisms:
<I would say that a gender-sensitive approach would pave the way to sustainable peace
and reconciliation, I would say, that women can play a very serious role…. it is very
important to create spaces for their participation in that way. But in [legal and policy
15 W1: <Witness= 1
16 C: <Commissioner=

71

entities] we are not meaningfully connecting women… There is a lack of women9s
participation.=
8Lack of women9s participation9 in the ongoing reconciliation process has been
documented extensively in media reports and academic literature since 2015 (Nazeemudeen,
2019; Fonseka and Schulz, 2018; Brounéus et. al., 2024). Although international formal
commitments including UN General Assembly Resolution 60/80 and Security Council
Resolution 1645 (2005) (which established the Peace Building Commission with the mandate
to coordinate resources and develop integrated strategies for post-war recovery), along with
UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and subsequent provisions on Women, Peace and
Security to inclusive peacebuilding and reconciliation had been implemented in Sri Lanka in
2015, the practical impact has been limited (Halkes, 2021). As noted by Grassroots Activist
829, women9s organisations participating in formal reconciliation consultations have found that
despite their contributions regarding psychosocial support and mechanisms to address wartime
violence in conflict-affected communities, these are not translated into meaningful policy and
legal action. Gender imbalance in official reconciliation policy development and legal
decision-making continues to undermine the holistic nature of reconciliation efforts (Sonal et
al., 2020).
Sri Lanka9s approach to truth hearings was criticised by multiple Grassroots Activist and
Civil Society Leader participants, drawing attention to the use of an interrogative structure by
the commissioners in conducting hearings. Although each proceeding started with a welcome
speech by the Commissioner, there was an absence of empathetic dialogue from the officials
to ensure the witnesses were at ease during the proceedings (Chandrasekar, 2015). Comments
by Civil Society Leader 819 and Grassroots Activist 819 focus on the 8lack of a human face9 to
proceedings that had a significant negative impact on the truth accounts by the witnesses:
<I remember that people complained to me that they [the Commission] adopted [a sense
of] superiority in the way they questioned and not showing genuine empathy for them [
Tamil participants] who had injuries from the war=
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The state officials sought to emotionally distance themselves from the witnesses, creating
an attitudinal divide between 8unfortunate them9 and 8fortunate us9. Their inquiries were
narrowly focused on taking down complaints or problems rather than encouraging witnesses
to freely share their stories that evoke realities on the ground. Witnesses were often interrupted
when speaking about their personal experiences and were directed to focus on their 8immediate
problem9 (LLRC, 2010). Grassroots Activist 819 claimed that many witnesses didn9t feel safe
to say everything that really mattered, and resorted to producing a 8filtered version9 of their
grievances that did not serve well for the reconciliation objectives. The activist further
elaborated that:
<Our follow-up surveys with testifiers revealed that approximately 40% felt they had to
self-censor during their testimonies. This self-censorship is still seen nowadays was
[primarily] due to fears of potential repercussions or a lack of trust in the process.=
The prevalence of 8self-censorship9 observed above reveals an ongoing climate of
intimidation within official reconciliation spaces that have failed to create the necessary
psychological safety for full and honest disclosure, perpetuating cycles of silence and
unresolved trauma even in 2024. This 8filtration process9 undermined the credibility of the
official reconciliation findings and recommendations and failed to capture the full spectrum of
experiences and perspectives necessary for bringing about a holistic reconciliation
(Chandrasekar, 2015). According to Grassroots Activists 819 and 829, this is one of the glaring
instances in which the official reconciliation process was perceived as a let-down by the people
at the grassroots.
My participants pointed out that these institutional shortcomings have resulted in a
widespread perception that reconciliation initiatives as a whole were primarily 8performative
exercises9, designed to appease international observers rather than to achieve meaningful
healing and justice (Seoighe, 2017; Ruwanpura, 2016). Grassroots Activist 849 highlights the
acute scepticism among civil society actors and victims9 groups:
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<[They] just came up with this to satisfy international donors. But very little came out
of this. [They] met with many of us and asked us what [our problems were], they also
said that they will look into it but they only approached this with the end goal of
validating the military victory… Most of us felt that they did this[reconciliation] just
for the sake of doing something.=
The widely-held belief that these initiatives were primarily manoeuvres to showcase
reconciliation efforts to appease external actors (such as the UN, international donors and other
regional bodies), further contributed to undermining the credibility of the reconciliation process
(Seoighe, 2017; Ruwanpura, 2016; Perera, 2023; Waldorf and Premaratna, 2024). The failure
to initiate substantial national outreach programs connecting grassroots and civil society
organisations further indicates the domination of a top-down approach that has neglected the
importance of broad-based, community-driven reconciliation efforts (Perera, 2023; Kapur,
2024). The use of reconciliation initiatives as a stratagem to satisfy international donors is a
tactless prioritisation of international perceptions over local needs (Perera, 2023; Waldorf and
Premaratna, 2024; Kapur, 2024). This approach creates a façade of reconciliation that neither
reflects the lived experiences of affected communities nor addresses the underlying issues that
perpetuated the war (Kapur, 2024).
Academic Researcher 4 points out that the gradual withering of initial enthusiasm
highlights missed opportunities in Sri Lanka9s reconciliation process. Despite the failures and
limitations highlighted in the processual and documentational aspects of the official truth
commissions, the official state reconciliation actionables in 2024 are still based on the two
public truth inquiries held in 2010 and 2016, respectively (Perera, 2023; Waldorf and
Premaratna, 2024; Kapur, 2024). The failure to capitalise on the constitutional reform process
initiated by the State demonstrates a lack of sustained political will to bring about a lasting and
meaningful change (Kapur, 2024). This has led to a disconnect between the recommendations
of reconciliation initiatives and the ground-level implementation, pointing to a fundamental
issue of misaligned objectives in Sri Lanka9s approach to reconciliation (Kapur, 2024).

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5.3 Conclusion
Based on my empirical analysis, significant disparities are revealed in how reconciliation
is understood and implemented by different stakeholders in post-war Sri Lanka. The evidence
points to a fundamental disconnect between top-down governmental initiatives and grassroots
experiences, characterised by inconsistent definitions, inaccessible documentation, and
performative approaches to reconciliation The lack of an organic, locally grounded definition
of reconciliation has resulted in widespread confusion and scepticism. Critical shortfalls in
documentation and preservation of witness testimonies in the LLRC and CTF have undermined
the truth-seeking aspects of reconciliation and risked the erasure of important historical
memory. The systematic exclusion of direct testimonies, questionable hearing procedures and
gender-biased approaches have created notable impediments to achieving genuine
reconciliation. Many reconciliation initiatives have been perceived as performative exercises
designed primarily to appease international observers rather than achieve meaningful healing
and justice. However, these failures in formal reconciliation programs have created spaces for
community-driven interpretations and approaches to 8everyday9 forms of reconciliation, as
evidenced by emerging grassroots initiatives such as women9s cooperatives. This suggests that
where state-led reconciliation efforts have fallen short, communities have demonstrated
resilience in developing their own organic understanding and practice of reconciliation.

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CHAPTER 6: MILITARISATION AND SECURITY: <CAUGHT BETWEEN
SUSPICION AND SURVIVAL=
6.1 Chapter Introduction
Militarisation in post-conflict Sri Lanka has given rise to unofficial methods of
monitoring people, often disregarding official guidelines and thus impeding reconciliation
efforts (Thiranagama, 2022; Perera, 2015; Kadirgamar, 2020). This de facto situation, explored
in detail in Chapter 2, has created many obstacles undermining attempts to build mutual trust
between the government and minority communities. This chapter delves into two interrelated
narratives of militarisation that emerged during my data collection: firstly, the 8everyday9
surveillance of civilian spaces, and secondly, land appropriation by the military purportedly for
economic development in the North and East.
The chapter begins by exploring issues arising from the intensified military presence in
these regions, uncovering the erosion of civil liberties and the perpetuation of a climate of fear
and mistrust. The chapter also examines the role of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs),
civil society organisations, and grassroots initiatives in addressing these challenges,
showcasing their efforts in reconciliation under constant surveillance and haphazardly imposed
restrictions, highlighting the drawbacks in top-down security-centric approaches. Next, I
explore issues surrounding land appropriation by the military in the North and East, resulting
in loss of livelihoods, social status and perpetuation of economic and political exclusion. The
interactions between security concerns and reconciliation efforts reveal the embedded
structural constraints and ideological determinants that have hindered the achievement of
positive peace in a post-war Sri Lanka. Finally, I analyse the implications of military
involvement in economic activities in the North and East, exploring the disconnect between
government-led economic development initiatives and the expectations of local communities
participating in the reconciliation process.

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6.2. 8Everyday9 Surveillance of Civilian Spaces
One of the recurring narratives that emerged from my discussions with participants was
the significant presence of government security forces in the North and East after the war.
Participants described an intensification of 8everyday9 surveillance of civilian populations,
which extends to the present day. Although existing literature suggested a reduction in
surveillance and an increase in freedom of expression following the 2016 change in
government (Subedi and Bulathsinghala, 2017), my research participants note that the
government has substantially expanded its military and naval capabilities in these areas since
2009. This claim is supported by Academic Researcher 839:
<I think, even two months ago [April 2024], you could see an extreme level of
surveillance in the North and East where young people [youth] were being arrested by
the police on suspicion of having connections with the LTTE or other extremist groups...
These are the reasons provided by the police and military to justify their actions...=
This 8everyday9 8extreme level of surveillance9 highlights steps taken by the government
for a persistent security-centric approach with sustained patterns of control that have become
normalised within the post-war period. Official reports and literature indicate that 50,000
additional military personnel were recruited to consolidate the war victory and bolster national
security (Mampilly, 2012), in the Northern and Eastern regions (Thiranagama, 2022; Perera,
2015; Kadirgamar, 2013; Keethaponcalan, 2019). A 2017 study focused on Mullaithivu
district, where the final phase of the war took place, revealed that eight years after the conflict9s
end, there was at least one soldier for every two civilian residents (Adayalaam Centre for Policy
Research, 2017). Academic Researcher 839 points out that:
<Presently there are 20 military [divisions] in this country- out of 20, 16 military
[divisions] are located in the North and East…= <continued perception of these areas
as potential security threats [by the government]=.
In situating this data, I note that the authorities leveraged a 8political rhetoric9 of
8bolstering national security9 to justify an intensified military presence (Subedi and
Bulathsinghala, 2018), reinforcing patriarchal power structures and the continuous
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perpetuation of a masculinised logic of protection (Young, 2003). This heightened military
presence has become a major source of discontent (Thiranagama, 2022). Academic Researcher
3 points out that,
<There seems to be misunderstanding, distrust and suspicion among different ethnic
groups in Sri Lanka, and at the same time, the state has become more and more of a
security state. You will understand [that], the level of securitisation has resulted in the
[increased] levels of militarisation taking place in this region. Every day we feel that
we are caught between suspicion and survival...=
This 8distrust and suspicion among different ethnic groups9 has prompted the government
to legitimise increased militarisation supported by surveillance. The impact of surveillance
extends beyond the Tamil community, as evidenced by Academic Researcher 849, who
comments about increased monitoring of Muslim communities since the Easter bombings in
2019:
<After the Easter bombings, we have noticed a lot of surveillance. The authorities are
[e]specially focused on Muslim communities… saying that they are worried about
extremist groups… While we can understand the need for security, this type of thing will
only [lead to] suspicion and fear among our people.=
An increased militarisation affecting the Muslim minority resulted in unsavoury
consequences for their community, including arbitrary detentions, torture, and the targeting of
their religious and cultural practices (Shaffer, 2024; Jayasundara‐Smits and Subedi, 2024).
Aggressive campaigns by Sinhalese nationalistic politicians have provided a backdrop for
instituting close surveillance and militarisation of the Muslim community (Klem, 2025). For
example, Facebook, over any other social media platform, was used by Buddhist nationalists
to spread propaganda against the Muslim minority (Shinohara, 2024). This has led to a
disproportionate gendered nature of security highlighted by Academic Researcher 819:
<The Muslim minorities basically faced a lot of problems …following their religious
rituals… for the women, their dress code and everything became a problem…. Most of
them were confined to their private spaces especially, I would say, from a feminist
perspective. Women, they did not-I mean, have the courage to go out wearing the Muslim
attire [hijabs and abhaya] because it was banned by the government… And so that was
really a very serious thing for the Muslim community, especially women…=

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Targeting religious and cultural practices of the Muslim minority points to how cultural
differences are securitised in the pursuance of national security (Shaffer, 2024; Jayasundara‐
Smits and Subedi, 2024), leading to a 8politics of unbelonging9 (Setijadi and Hur, 2024; Zevnik
and Russell, 2025) where the state actively uses cultural differences, othering and
marginalising certain communities leading to a situation where different communities occupy
distinct spaces with limited opportunities for meaningful encounter and dialogue. Therefore,
the restriction of Muslim women9s religious attire reveals how 8everyday9 reconciliation
operates through the systematic shrinking of spaces where authentic cultural and religious
identity can be safely expressed. When Muslim women cannot appear in public spaces wearing
hijabs and abhayas, the possibility for inter-community contact that might facilitate organic,
8everyday9 forms of reconciliation is systematically excluded. The public sphere thus becomes
monopolised by those whose cultural expressions are deemed 8safe9, whilst those marked as
culturally 8other9 are relegated to private spaces where they remain invisible to the broader
reconciliation process.
Interviewees highlighted a shift in the nature of surveillance from an overt military
presence to what Academic Researcher 839 terms a 8subtle and covert process of military
operations9 particularly in the North and East, which reflects a shrewd adaptation of state
control mechanisms aimed at harassing and intimidating ethnic minorities. Media reports claim
that the military required Tamil civilians in the Northern Province to obtain prior approval for
holding gatherings, such as funerals (Human Rights Watch, 2018), which is an important form
of 8everyday9 reconciliation that operates through the regulation of communal and ritual
practices. Academic Researchers 839 and 849 contend that in recent years, the government
moved to maintain authority through surveillance operations by unleashing a regime of fearpsychosis and intimidation in these regions. Unannounced visits to homes of former LTTE
members and their families by military intelligence officers, often during evening hours for
<routine checks= that served no clear security purpose, but created a state of anxiety by families
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who never knew if they might be visited, questioned, and potentially detained (Fathurrahman
and Kartini, 2021; Buthpitiya, 2022). This type of manipulation causes both intended and
unintended consequences, for instance, the surveillance process can be perceived by the
communities as a deterrent to future intransigences and displays of anti-government
sentiments, and there is also the possibility of sparking off hatred and animosity against the
government that can materialise into potential insurgencies (Buthpitiya, 2022).
Media reports since the Easter Sunday bombings in 2019 claimed a heightened level of
surveillance against Muslim communities in Kattankudy and other parts of the Eastern
Province, resulting in random checks on Muslim youth and close monitoring of activities in
mosques (Imtiyaz and Mohamed Saleem, 2023; Ethirajan, 2019; Al Jazeera, 2022). This
situation cannot promote actively expressed cooperation and participation in a reconciliation
process built upon trust and mutual respect. The consequences of close surveillance are further
elaborated by my participants. Civil Society Activist 819 claimed that they are <[acutely] aware
of being monitored, but remain uncertain about the specific methods= involved. The ambiguity
surrounding surveillance tactics adds psychological pressure on the affected communities.
Grassroots Activist 829 clarified that the monitoring of civilians is often carried out by
undercover agents and <Criminal Investigation Department17 [CID] personnel=, which can
<[breed] suspicion between [one] community member against the other, destroying the trust
and unity within our community=.
Another important factor highlighted by Academic Researcher 819 is that female excombatants are subjected to surveillance by using different tactics. Grassroots Activist 819
contends that the military considered female ex-combatants more competent in organising
community resistance, given the LTTE9s history of prominence given to women9s leadership.

17 Criminal Investigation Department (CID). It9s a specialised division of the Sri Lankan police force

responsible for handling complex criminal investigations and matters of national security (Sri Lanka Police,
2024)

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My participant claimed that female ex-combatants in Vavuniya who had attempted to organise
support groups for war widows faced immediate increased surveillance and intimidation visits.
On the other hand, Academic Researcher 819 notes that many female ex-combatants became
household heads due to war losses, making them vulnerable to pressure tactics. Military
officials exploited their situation by threatening to withhold crucial livelihood assistance unless
they cooperated with surveillance requirements (Groundviews, 2014; Usoof-Thowfeek and
Gunasekera, 2021). Grassroots Activists 819 and 839 claim that on account of frequent
monitoring by military personnel, some women9s past involvement with the LTTE was
revealed, which made them less desirable by potential employers. Another aspect of this
situation that was highlighted by the participants concerns some female ex-combatants who
were also heads of households, who cooperated with the reconciliation process despite the
intensity of militarisation, surveillance and harassment, mainly to obtain gainful employment
opportunities (Azmi, 2015). This form of economic coercion transgresses 8everyday9 survival
strategies into mechanisms of state control.
Civil Society Leader 2 comments that harassment and discrimination of female
combatants <are not limited to employment opportunities, but extend to daily lives in the
privacy of their homes=. Media reports confirm that female ex-combatants are subjected to
visits by military officials at 8any time9 and under 8any pretext9, ostensibly for surveillance
purposes (Groundviews, 2012). The psychological consequences are exemplified by
Grassroots Activist 829:
<There are many cases of young women complaining that regular visits by security
personnel have made them very nervous and [culminated in] angry encounters with
their family members and neighbours and they had to seek medical assistance [for the
treatment of tension and anxiety].
Participants note that continuous surveillance has profoundly affected their ability to
effectively reintegrate into their communities. Current research by Brounéus et al. (2024) and

81

Meier (2020) supports these observations, bringing into light the difficulties these women face
in finding work and marriage partners. Civil Society Leader 829 points out that,
<[They] can be ostracised by their own community members for cooperating with the
government because there are members of their community who do not wish to
participate in the reconciliation process due to apathy and mistrust [of the intentions of
the government]=.
These women are trapped between suspicions cast upon them by community members
and the need to secure their own economic survival. Academic Researcher 819 states that this
<presence of the military in the North and East has also significantly altered the social
dynamics, often [pitting] women against each other= based on their perceived loyalty to the
state.
Literature has documented the challenges faced by female ex-combatants in Sri Lanka,
and efforts directed towards mitigating militarisation-induced surveillance and harassment
(Macfarlane, 2024; Jayasundara‐Smits and Subedi, 2024; Associated War Affected Women in
Sri Lanka, 2020). However, my participants9 narratives suggest that the problem persists, has
negatively impacted the reconciliation process, and contributed to a disconnect between the
existing efforts to ameliorate the ill-effects of militarisation and 8everyday9 lived experiences
of this vulnerable group. One of the key reasons for this detachment is the lack of a
comprehensive and holistic approach that encompasses a bottom-up involvement of the
grassroots participants in both the design and implementation of the reconciliation process.
Academic Researcher 819 contends that <needs and concerns such as inclusivity of female excombatants are not always adequately reflected in the policies and programs developed to
support them=. The existing efforts have often focused on narrow, piecemeal solutions, without
addressing the deeper structural and political issues that underlie the marginalisation of this
community. According to my participants, granting of microcredit in poverty alleviation
programs and the provision of vocational training sponsored by the government are important,
but these are insufficient if not accompanied by systematic efforts to ameliorate social stigma,
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removal of intrusive activities by the security forces, and democratise the broader political
context that marginalises the lived experiences of these women.
Grassroots Activists and local Civil Society Leaders indicated that various initiatives
have been undertaken to create open spaces for women to voice their concerns and advocate
for change. For example, the Women9s Action Network in the Northern Province created the
8Women9s Safe Spaces9 program, which established community centres where women,
particularly ex-combatants and war widows, could meet safely. Whilst local communities
possess agency in creating reconciliation spaces, this agency operates within severe structural
constraints. These spaces provided cover for women to discuss issues such as military
harassment and organise responses whilst appearing to be craft groups or economic collectives
(Saroor, 2017), which represents a form of 8everyday9 resistance that maintains the appearance
of compliance whilst pursuing substantive reconciliation work. However, this concealment
strategy also reveals how 8everyday9 reconciliation on the ground is subterfuged instead of
maintaining an open dialogue, and the need for such deception illustrates the constraints
imposed by intense surveillance. This resourcefulness also cast doubts on well-meaning policy
initiatives undertaken by the government such as The National Action Plan on Women, Peace
and Security (of 2018), the 2018 Office of Missing Persons (OMP), and the Office for National
Unity and Reconciliation9s (ONUR) Livelihood Support Program (2015-2020) that have
succumbed to inefficiencies in implementation at the grassroots level. Criticisms have been
levelled at inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of the officers in charge of policy implementation
(Sonal et al., 2020). Civil Society Leader 819 and Academic Researcher 849 have noted instances
of dishonesty and discreditable behaviour, compelling the women to place their trust in the
grassroots activists more than the government.

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6.3 8Everyday9 Surveillance of NGOs, Civil Society and Grassroots Activists
Another theme emerging from my analysis of intensified military surveillance reveals a
broader scope than previously acknowledged in existing literature, encompassing NGOs, civil
society leaders, and grassroots activists working on reconciliation and human rights issues in
the North and East of Sri Lanka. Academic Researcher 839 provided a succinct account of the
extent and impact of 8everyday9 surveillance:
<NGOs are controlled by the government. You can9t do peace education or
reconciliation-related programs, human rights-related programs in the North and East
freely…You should inform the relevant authority that oftentimes [is] the CID [officers
of which] will come [and] sit in your workshop and your program, and they will watch
what is happening …Sometimes CID comes and stops the programs.=
This testimony highlights the intense nature of surveillance and restrictions faced by
NGOs working on issues relevant to reconciliation and the operational environment. The
presence of intelligence officers at workshops and programs creates an atmosphere of
intimidation and self-censorship, stifling open dialogue and honest engagement on sensitive
issues. The heightened level of surveillance goes beyond mere observation: it represents 8soft
power9 that moderates critical discourse and limits the scope of civil society activities. The Sri
Lankan Army9s 2013 report in response to the LLRC recommendations emphasise the
necessity for monitoring non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for 8security purposes9 (Sri
Lankan Army Board, 2013, p.24: 18). NGO monitoring reveals a post-conflict hypervigilance
on perceived potential threats, undermining effectiveness of organisations working for peace
and reconciliation.
The 2013 official report by the army claims that there are no restrictions on the activities
of genuine organisations. However, my participants reveal that all international organisations,
international NGOs, and local NGOs should undergo screening and investigative processes by
the Ministry of Defence with the stated aim to prevent 8undesirable elements9 from
compromising national security (Sri Lankan Army Board, 2013, p.24: 18). Screening these
organisations leaves room for subjective evaluations, manipulatory practices and arbitrary
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decisions influenced by political considerations. Academic Researcher 839 comments that
these control mechanisms can potentially lead to <self-censorship addressing certain critical
issues such as minority political rights to avoid risks to their operational status=.
Screening and controlling NGOs to prevent <undesirable elements= from compromising
national security reveals an ingrained mistrust of these organisations and leads to an
undermining of their position as competent partners in reconciliation and development efforts
(particularly in the North and East) (Amarasiri et al., 2021). This negative labelling can justify
extensive interference in NGO activities, decisions on selecting personnel and sources of
funding. I contend that this framing is biased and can lead to a critical resource gap in
manpower and much-needed expertise. The International Crisis Group (2017) noted that,
<NGOs working on reconciliation, human rights, and governance issues face increasing
restrictions and harassment from security forces and intelligence agencies=. According to
CPA (2016), 78% of surveyed NGOs reported experiencing some form of government
interference, ranging from mandatory reporting requirements to direct obstruction of activities.
The surveillance of NGOs includes program interruptions and visa suspensions for
international NGO workers. Academic Researcher 3 described the broader implications of
these intrusive mechanisms:
<So, these NGOs are under extreme surveillance in the North and East. NGO personnel
have been arrested by police. The government has suspended visas for some
International NGO workers in Sri Lanka....some NGOs have left Sri Lanka because of
the Government9s [intrusive]surveillance and suspension of visas.=
The interruption of programs and suspension of visas for international NGO workers
create a climate of fear and uncertainty, forcing them to constantly weigh the outcomes of their
interventions against potential government reprisals. Academic Researcher 839 further
comments that the arrest of NGO personnel and forced departure of some international NGOs
from Sri Lanka indicate a systematic effort to control and limit the influence of civil society
organisations operating in sensitive areas such as reconciliation and human rights. This climate
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of fear and uncertainty has thwarted grassroots reconciliation efforts, as evidenced by the
testimony of Civil Society Leader 829:
<We used to join with INGOs for our peace-building workshops... now, we9re scared
to even mention topics like federalism or power-sharing… we don9t know whether we
are breaking some laws…. The risk of being investigated or shut down is too high.=
The lack of motivation to carry out reconciliation efforts by focusing on power-sharing
mechanisms illustrates the extent to which self-censorship has become a survival strategy for
many NGOs, impeding the healing process that is an essential precursor towards genuine
reconciliation. By removing 8sensitive9 topics from the realm of public discussion on account
of a top-down imposed climate of fear thwarts the development of comprehensive, inclusive
solutions to ongoing challenges faced by the reconciliation process. Grassroots Activist 829
explained that:
<When NGOs are restricted, it9s the local communities that suffer most. These
organisations provide crucial support... funding, training, [and] safe spaces for
dialogue. Without these, grassroots movements struggle to make any real progress on
reconciliation.=
As Grassroots Activist 829 points out, NGOs serve as essential conduits for providing resources,
training, and safe spaces for dialogue. Curtailment of NGO activities has a negative impact on
the most vulnerable segments of society, who rely on these organisations for support and
advocacy. This situation hinders community support and participation in development
initiatives, exacerbating marginalisation, economic hardships, and obstructing genuine
reconciliation efforts at the grassroots level. My participants also identified a pattern of
selective engagement of NGOs by the government, revealing a nuanced strategy of co-optation
within civil society. Grassroots Activist 819 observes that:
<The government likes NGOs that praise the government9s initiatives. If you criticise
and [propose genuine] accountability, you are called a threat to national security. This
situation does not help a good level of participation by community members on
reconciliation [programs].=

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The selective favouritism of NGOs by the government, underplaying critical issues, has
created a veneer of cordiality in engaging with non-governmental actors whilst at the same
time stifling genuine dissent and critical analysis.
Security-centric approaches identified by my participants have dampened the efforts of
organisations focused on women9s issues and gender equality. The widening gap between the
rhetoric of 8women, peace, and security9 and ground-level implementation efforts (as discussed
under the previous theme) can be directly linked to the prevalence of a restrictive atmosphere.
Academic Researcher 849 comments that women9s organisations at the forefront of grassroots
reconciliation efforts face both state-manifested and societal challenges: <they navigate the
general restrictions imposed on NGOs, but they also [confront entrenched societal and
institutional biases against] women9s participation in peace processes=.

Additionally,

Grassroots Activist 829 and Civil Society Leader 819 pointed out that the obstacles placed upon
women9s organisations further marginalise women9s voices in the reconciliation process,
perpetuating gender inequalities and missing insightful perspectives in peacebuilding efforts.
The long-term implications of these restrictions contribute to an erosion of trust between the
state and civil society, creating an atmosphere of mutual suspicion that conflicts with effective
governance and social progress, a critical theme for effective reconciliation that is dealt within
this empirical analysis.
As pointed out by Academic Researcher 839, the trust deficit contributes to a 8distancing
of international partners and donors9, resulting in reduced support for development initiatives
in Sri Lanka. Restrictions forced upon civil society spaces severely limit the country9s capacity
for innovation in addressing post-conflict challenges. My Grassroots Activist participants
contend that NGOs and grassroots organisations often serve as <[incubators] for new ideas
and approaches=, and their marginalisation suppresses the much-needed critical voices and
alternative viewpoints that can promote the quality of public discourse and decision-making
processes. Creating an echo chamber circulating state-approved narratives undermines the
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foundations of a holistic reconciliation process and sustainable peace in Sri Lanka (Centre for
Equality and Justice, 2019; Ariyarathne and Grewal, 2025; p. 131).
According to many of my participants, although community members voiced their
grievances to state authorities and non-state actors during multiple reconciliatory COIs, it has
not resulted in diminishing the severity of surveillance. Failure to engage in a dialogue
grounded in trust building and mutual understanding, and 8everyday9 surveillance of minorities
by the military in the North and East has led to a distancing between the communities and the
reconciliation process (Ariyarathne and Grewal, 2025; p. 131).
6.4. Appropriation of Land in the North and East by the Military
The return of appropriated civilian lands held since the end of the war by the military is
one of the key issues of reconciliation that demands to be addressed (Unruh, 2019; Jayathilaka,
2020; Silva et al., 2020). This issue is highlighted in many official reconciliation reports,
including the final report of the LLRC (2011,6.6.2 p.221):
<Displacement of persons as well as loss of land and homes [are] major conflict related
outcomes, and affected all communities. The LLRC concluded that <measures and
policies ensuring legitimate land rights, especially among the returning Internally
Displaced Persons [IDP]s, would contribute significantly to restoring normalcy and
promoting reconciliation=.
As highlighted by my participants, despite the official rhetoric supporting land
restitution, it is still an ongoing issue. This section extends the previous discussion on
8everyday9 surveillance (covered above in 6.2) and examines how land acquisition by the
military in the North and East creates a more comprehensive system of militarised control by
close observation through physical occupation and holding administrative authority that in turn,
adversely affect reconciliation efforts and community well-being. Whilst 8everyday9
surveillance enables the military to monitor civilian activities through checkpoints and
intelligence gathering, land acquisition physically embeds this surveillance infrastructure into
8everyday9 community spaces creating 8a dual system9, according to Academic Researcher 849,

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when surveillance becomes territorially anchored through land occupation, that in itself
facilitates more intensive surveillance of civilians.
6.4.1 Disputes Associated with Military-Acquired Civilian Lands
Grassroots Activist 829 recounted an incident concerning a coconut plantation which was
their family property, situated in a coastal town in the Jaffna district. During the war, the LTTE
had forcibly appropriated the land, and after the war, it was acquired by the military to promote
8economic development9. The legitimate owners sought legal action that took several years,
and they succeeded in reclaiming their property, marking a significant corrective in their
struggle for justice.
My analysis raises critical questions about whether such militarised development can
genuinely contribute to reconciliation when it perpetuates patterns of control and dispossession
that may deepen, rather than heal, community grievances by appropriation of land in the North
and East by the military and 8economic development9 undertaken by the military. A
considerable number of studies describe how thousands of acres of land currently remain under
the control of the military, undergoing <slow but steady return of military-occupied land to
Tamil owners= (International Crisis Group 2017, p.18), which highlights the entrenched nature
of this problem.
Some of my participants offer an assessment of challenges prevalent in land returns as
recently as 2024. Civil Society Leader 829 points out that holding onto lands by the military not
only deprives communities of their ownership of lands, but also is a constant reminder of their
subordinate status as a <landless people in this country=. My discussions with Civil Society
Leader 829 and Grassroots Activist 1 revealed that active participation in the reconciliation
process is much hampered by a far greater worry of being landless by displaced people, who
do not consider the reconciliation process as a means of getting their lands back.
As noted by Grassroots Activists 819, one of the key challenges faced in reclaiming their
lands is the inability of the Provincial Councils to effectively trace the legal ownership of lands,
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mainly due to the absence of documentation such as certified deeds, bequests, and evidence of
purchases (Wanninayake, 2021). Civil society leader 819 puts this situation into perspective:
<One of the hardest things is seeking official documentation of land ownership from
the Grama Niladaris18. I think that they are hardworking government officers, and they
do their best to help their communities but sometimes they also don9t have the answers
when people go and complain because it9s the military who has [occupied] our land. It
is very hard... we lost everything in the war... they bombed everything... so tracing back
[genuine ownership of ancestral] land is [an] impossible [task].=
From the above narration, it becomes clear the hopelessness felt by a large majority
whose lands have become 8lands to be re-claimed9 from the military, and to face the
consequences of destruction of documents due to the war, with little help from the central
government that has delegated this task to the Local Authorities. Academic Researcher 829
comments that to this date, there is no direct administrative body, such as a 8land reclamation
taskforce or authority9 mandated by the central government under the purview of the Local
Authorities to speed up the process of land returns and bring this humanitarian crisis to a
satisfactory conclusion. Although the Ministry of Resettlement and Disaster Relief was
designated as the primary agency to bring much-needed relief, overlapping responsibilities
across various ministries led to inefficiencies and duplications of effort (Wanninayake, 2021).
Many participants observe that the inability of Grama Niladaris to resolve land
ownership complaints effectively is not a lapse of individual officials, but due to a priority of
interest established within the Sri Lankan state (Saparamadu and Lall, 2014) where military
interests supersede civilian concerns, especially in former conflict zones. Grama Niladaris are
theoretically positioned to address local concerns, but their lack of authority to mediate in
disputes involving the military reveals a lacuna in local governance when confronted with
issues of importance to national security (Saparamadu and Lall, 2014). My participants further
illustrated that failure to resolve land disputes at the local level forces these matters to be taken

18 A Grama Niladari (translated to 8village administrative officer9 or 8Village Headmen9) is a public official

who serves as the lowest-level government representative at the town/village level, which is the smallest
administrative unit in the country (Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, 2016).

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up the bureaucratic chain, hampered by delays and miscommunications, resulting in a
disconnect between policy formulation by the political hierarchy and implementation on the
ground.
Academic Researcher 819 comments that the persistence of these issues nearly 15 years
after the end of the war suggests a deeper systemic problem, <where many point to an
unwillingness at the political level to fully commit to the processes of demilitarisation.=
Academic Researcher 849 points out that unwillingness at the <political level [stems from
entrenched] political interests, a persistent securitisation mindset, and concerns about
maintaining [centralised] control over regions in the North and East=.
The militarisation of land has posed a barrier for amicable coexistence among
communities (Thalpawila, 2017; Wanninayake, 2016). Coupled with ongoing military
presence, this has created an environment of uncertainty and insecurity, impeding the ability
of communities to rebuild their lives and livelihoods (Wanninayake, 2016). As noted by
Grassroots Activist 2: <[The continued] military [presence] reminds us of the hardships we
face every day because of the loss of our lands…we feel we are being punished and excluded.=
These daily experiences of military presence fundamentally undermine reconciliation by
creating three specific barriers to rebuilding inter-community trust. First, the routine visibility
of military checkpoints, patrols, and occupied lands serves as a constant reminder of the war9s
victor-vanquished dichotomy, reinforcing ethnic divisions rather than fostering equality
between communities. This prevents a shift in 8mindset9 from war to cooperation that genuine
reconciliation requires. Second, the restrictions on movement, economic activity, and land use
that local communities daily experience create grievances, further fueling resentment. Third,
the imposition of military authority in civilian spaces erodes the civic foundations necessary
for a holistic reconciliation by demonstrating to communities that power, rather than dialogue
and compromise, determines outcomes.

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A pall of suspicion and resentment makes some of the well-intentioned government
initiatives, such as government relief grants and 8slow but steady9 land returns to be treated
with scepticism and apathy (Seoighe, 2017). This scepticism matters crucially for
reconciliation because it demonstrates how militarisation can mitigate the trust-building
process at its foundation. When communities interpret genuine concessions as strategic
manipulation rather than gestures of good faith, the reciprocal exchanges of confidence
essential in building reconciliation become limited. The 8everyday9 experience of living under
military authority thus creates suspicion where communities can become confused between
sincere reconciliation efforts and continued domination, making them resistant to engagement.
Thus, 8everyday9 reconciliation on the ground plays out through what can be understood as
perfunctory performances of normalisation, where both military and civilian actors engage in
routines that create an appearance of normal civilian life whilst maintaining underlying power
imbalances.
My discussions with participants highlight the psychological trauma of dislocation and
displacement and the challenges of dealing with an ill-equipped bureaucratic system to handle
post-war claims on appropriated land (Wickramaratne, 2021). This is particularly burdensome
for the elderly, women-headed households, and those who are below the poverty line (ibid.,
2020). Academic Researcher 849 notes that local administrative officers face obstacles in
addressing these issues:
<This militarisation of land administration has [profound] implications for the affected
communities, undermining their rights, livelihoods, and sense of belonging and the lack
of official documents such as ownership deeds and past records of occupation=
The above comment reveals that militarised land administration has complicated the
establishment of property rights and return of acquired land, and adversely affected the identity,
livelihood, and cohesion of community members (Biyanwila, 2023), impacting negatively on
the effective implementation of the reconciliation process (Jegathesan, 2019). Civil Society
Leader 829 stresses that, <land is not [merely a] commodity but [a repository of] heritage,
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culture, and [generational] knowledge.= For communities whose identities and economic
activities are deeply rooted in specific geographical locations, displacement is not just a
physical relocation, but a disruption of their existence. This is particularly true for farming and
fishing communities, whose skills and livelihoods are irrevocably tied to specific lands and
water bodies. Civil Society Leader 819 comments that:
<This has not only restricted the land return and distribution process to already
displaced communities, but has also resulted in restrictions imposed on access to
pasture lands, forests, lagoons and beaches, causing severe economic impacts on the
livelihoods of communities whose members are primarily farmers and fishermen=
The loss of access to these resources amounts to a loss of economic independence, social
and cultural identity, and community structures that have evolved over many generations, and
a reconciliation process that cannot provide immediate answers to some of these problems does
not attract support and commitment. Civil Society Leader 819 and 829 and Academic Researcher
819 commented that in response to the government9s investment promotion policy, an upsurge
of prospective investors wishing to acquire large blocks of land has competed for arable land
in the North and East since 2018 (Buthpitiya, 2013). This issue was echoed by many aggrieved
participants in interviews concerning the reconciliation process, emphasising their deep
cultural connections to the land, particularly for rural communities engaged in fishing and
agriculture. The deep-rooted connection between communities and their land makes relocation
and financial recompense inadequate to address these issues (Ibrahim, 2020; Weerathunga,
2020). My participants also highlighted that land returns by the military as a <gift= was
perceived as an insulting gesture: a fact that is not extensively discussed in existing literature.
It is also noteworthy that the return of the lands did not accompany apologies, compensation
for displacements and loss of earnings, damages, and trauma caused by the occupation. This
experience of receiving back one9s own land as a military favour creates a warped relationship
where rightful ownership is reframed as military benevolence, effectively delegitimising local

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community claims and undermining the foundation of reconciliation based on an
acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
According to my participants, political influence is curried by rich and powerful
individuals and private companies eager to exploit the economic potential of land that was
forcibly acquired by the military, without any regard for the rightful owners or communitycentred development (Ruwanpura et al., 2020; Kelegama and Korf, 2023). Furthermore, the
military is engaged in managing many of the development projects and commercial
establishments in the North and East. Community Members have been told that their lands are
required for 8public purposes9, a sacrifice for the greater good, denying them Free, Prior and
Informed Consent (FPIC) (Wickramaratne, 2021). Civil Society Leader 819 shared the
following sentiment:
<It9s not just about security anymore. The army is everywhere - running farms, shops,
and even tourist resorts. They have taken over land that belonged to our people and
turned [those] into businesses. It9s like they9re trying to control every aspect of our
lives.=
This observation makes it clear that the army has expanded its influence and
encroachment into civil administration and civilian business sectors. In the Northern and NorthEastern provinces, the military now operates businesses, restaurants, tourist resorts, and
domestic airlines (Thiranagama, 2022). This 8expansion9, as noted by my participants, goes
beyond hitherto accepted military roles. A substantial portion of the budget allocated to the
Urban Development Authority has been incorporated into the defence ministry
(Keethaponcalan, 2019). This shift indicates a blurring of the demarcation lines between
military and civilian governance structures that subvert the democratic principles of managing
the country9s economy, and signals a not-too-distant possibility of a substantial militarisation
of Sri Lanka as a whole (Keethaponcalan, 2019). This situation underscores a recurring theme
that appeared in my interviews: the link between the economic security of the communities in
the North and East and willing and meaningful participation in the reconciliation process.
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A present-day evaluation of the depth of the military involvement in the North and East
is provided by my participants, referring to 8military fiscalism9 and 8military corporatism9,
processes by which the military becomes gradually incorporated into the economy. For
instance, the military has taken over agricultural lands from the owners and is involved in
vegetable farming (Subedi and Bulathsinghala, 2018). This involves the utilisation of state
expenditure through security apparatuses to provide economic support for impoverished and
neglected rural areas acquired by the military (Venugopal, 2011). Economic support from the
military extends to many poor villages, where every household has at least one member
receiving a salary, pension, or other financial benefit, giving rise to 8military corporatism9
(Venugopal, 2011; Subedi and Bulathsinghala, 2018). This becomes entangled with economic
dependency that provides material support and reinforces political subordination, making
8everyday9 reconciliation an arena of community tension as opposed to a unified approach.
However, the interviews also revealed a critical insight into this narrative. Civil Society Leader
819 notes that:
<Things have changed a bit since 2015. The military is still involved in farming and
local businesses, but not as much as before. We9re seeing more civilian authorities
making decisions about local development now.=
Although a reduction in direct military involvement in local economic activities since
2015 suggests a gradual shift towards normalising civilian governance which can be interpreted
as a positive step, the prevalence of military-owned businesses and continued occupation of
local lands complicates this narrative, revealing a nuanced reality where the military9s
economic influence, perhaps less overt, remains a significant factor in local power dynamics.
According to Academic Researcher 829, there is a glimmer of hope for the communities
that have suffered much. <From the point of the government, a boom in military-owned
businesses in these areas [presents a favourable] economic outlook on the communities who
have suffered many hardships,= because these enterprises contribute to local economic activity,
creating jobs and stimulating market growth. Economic stimulus is a form of post-war
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reconciliation to jumpstart the local economy and provide much-needed employment
opportunities in war-torn areas. However, this approach begs the question, 8Why is it that
economic revitalisation cannot be pursued through civilian initiatives?9 Even if wellintentioned, this approach has prolonged marginalisation among local communities.
6.5 Conclusion
Drawing from my empirical analysis of militarisation in post-war Sri Lanka, I conclude
that the dual impacts of 8everyday9 surveillance and land appropriation by the military present
significant obstacles to genuine reconciliation. Persistence of military surveillance of civilian
spaces, NGOs, and civil society organisations creates a climate of fear and mistrust that
undermines efforts to build mutual understanding among communities. Surveillance activities
disproportionately affect women, particularly female ex-combatants, who face unique
challenges in reintegrating into society, navigating persistent monitoring and social stigma. The
appropriation of land by the military, justified through economic development narratives,
erodes trust between minority communities and the central government. Some military-led
economic initiatives have brought limited economic benefits, but failed to address deeper issues
of cultural identity, autonomy, and community empowerment that can promote meaningful
reconciliation.
My findings reveal a fundamental disconnect between the government9s security-centric
approach to post-war governance and the needs of affected communities for genuine healing
and reconciliation. This is exacerbated by bureaucratic hurdles in land restitution and the
expansion of military involvement in civilian economic activities, which often benefit external
interests rather than local communities. The resulting trust deficit between the state and
minority populations creates a cycle of suspicion and resentment that continues to obstruct
reconciliation efforts.

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CHAPTER 7: MINORITY RIGHTS AND RECOGNITION: <WE FEEL LOST IN
OUR OWN LAND=
7.1 Chapter Introduction
This chapter examines the critical role of minority rights in Sri Lanka9s post-war
reconciliation process needed to build a holistic reconciliation framework. It delves into two
interrelated dimensions identified during data collection as imperatives for fostering an
inclusive and equitable society toward a holistic reconciliation: political autonomy and
language rights. The chapter begins by exploring the narratives surrounding the 13th
Amendment to Sri Lanka9s constitution (see Chapter 2). Successive governments have
positioned this amendment as a vital policy framework for reconciliation, asserting that its
complete implementation would tackle minority grievances through devolved governance and
equal political and cultural rights. However, my empirical analysis focuses upon three key
challenges facing its implementation: declining political aspirations among minority
communities, strong opposition to devolution by Sinhalese nationalist politicians, and
persistent structural and socio-political barriers to effective implementation.
Next, I explore key issues of minority language rights and reveal the dominance of the
Sinhala language that perpetuates a systematic marginalisation among minority communities.
My analysis examines the practical implications of the linguistic divide, from barriers to
accessing public services to the perpetuation of cultural and political exclusion. Juxtaposing
these two interrelated dimensions, I explore the interplay between political and language rights,
dominance of the Sinhala language in state institutions that impacts the ability to participate in
political processes, access to public services, and government institutions, creating a system of
linguistic marginalisation and political disempowerment that undermines reconciliation efforts.

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7.2 Minority Political Rights: Political Autonomy and Power Sharing
7.2.1 Erosion of Political Aspirations and Trust Deficit
One of the narratives that emerged from my discussions with participants regarding the
13th Amendment of the Sri Lankan Constitution (13A, 1987) is that those to whom it means
the most have become its vociferous opponents. Key elements of the 13th Amendment applied
to post-war reconciliation centres on the devolution of political power and language rights
(13A, 1987; Pullé and Ratnapala, 2019). The amendment established provincial councils in the
North and East with devolved powers over land, law enforcement, and local development, to
exercise regional autonomy and self-governance (ibid., 13A). In practice, the government has
retained significant control through various mechanisms, including the appointment of a
Governor (appointed by the President) with the powers of oversight (Pullé and Ratnapala,
2019; Sahadevan, 2024; Junik, 2023). The 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1987
formally recognised Tamil as an official language alongside Sinhala and recognised English as
a link language, aiming to redress linguistic discrimination since 1952 (13A, 1987) (Pullé and
Ratnapala, 2019; Junik, 2023). Until 2019, existing literature (Manoharan, 2019; Sultana,
2015) took a positive outlook on the amendment as a viable path towards devolution and
reconciliation.
Grassroots Activist 819 and Academic Researchers 839 and 849 conveyed scepticism over
a comprehensive implementation of the 13th Amendment to Sri Lanka9s Constitution in the
post-war context of 2024, because it did not represent a genuine shift in perspective, but
continued to function as a political instrument (Pullé and Ratnapala, 2019). I draw the
observation from these responses that political, cultural and social power dynamics have
remained unchanged both before and after 2019, and the 13th Amendment has mainly served
as a diplomatic tool for successive Sri Lankan governments to project an image of progress in
post-war reconciliation to international observers (Pullé and Ratnapala, 2019; Junik, 2023).

98

This insight supports my participants9 deep scepticism on the promised potential of the 13 th
Amendment and systematic erosion of minority political aspirations during the post-war
reconciliation period. (Wickramaratne, 2021; Pullé and Ratnapala, 2019; Junik, 2023).
Another anomaly discussed during my interviews was the regular postponement of
provincial council elections (Pushparajah and Balamayuran, 2024; Pullé and Ratnapala, 2019;
Junik, 2023), which is an infringement of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution
of Sri Lanka. (13A, 1987) Academic Researcher 829 points out that:
<Tamil political parties have this grievance that no government will give them equal
status [through the democratisation] of provincial councils. There have been no
Provincial Council elections for nearly 4 years now...but no government, including the
present [one] wants to hold elections. They are [impervious to the fact] that this is a
denial of fundamental political rights of the Tamil people to have some degree of selfrule.=
This observation highlights a 8trust deficit9 in the government9s commitment towards the
process of a genuine reconciliation because there is an abiding unwillingness to promote
political participation of minority communities despite the constitutional mandate (Pushparajah
and Balamayuran, 2024; Pullé and Ratnapala, 2019; Junik, 2023). Academic Researcher 829
emphasises that this pattern of postponement reveals a deliberate strategy adopted by
successive governments, insensitive to minority rights. Denial of provincial elections affects
the right to self-governance through democratically elected local institutions (Pullé and
Ratnapala, 2019) and effectively prevents minority communities from making decisions
affecting their communities, contributing to political marginalisation in the post-war context
(Pullé and Ratnapala, 2019; Junik, 2023).
Actions taken in 2024 compared with those in 2019 revolve around a hardening of
resolutions for circumventing the implementation of a transparent reconciliation process,
especially in the light of changing governments and policy perspectives (Junik, 2023). Shifts
in policies and administrative actions weakened implementation mechanisms in the North and
East, due to the appointment of military officers to key civilian administrative positions. (Aliff,
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2015). The Constitutional Council, which had the authority to approve appointments to
independent commissions, was replaced with a Parliamentary Council where the President held
unilateral power to appoint members to key positions in independent bodies such as the Human
Rights Commission (Perera, 2021). Withdrawal from previous commitments to Resolution
30/1 (of 2015) made at the UN Human Rights Council on transitional justice and reconciliation
mechanisms such as establishment of a domestic commission of inquiry instead of an
international hybrid court to investigate war crimes allegations, in addition to security sector
reforms and de-militarisation of the North and East (Weerasekera, 2023; Kalanadan, 2020)
amounted to a strengthening of obstacles in the path to reconciliation (Jayakody, 2024). These
questions are better answered in the following section.
7.2.2 Sinhalese Nationalism and Resistance to Devolution
Grassroots Activist 819 pointed out the tenacious resistance to devolution by Sinhalese
nationalist groups. The government9s reluctance to hold Provincial Council elections is an
outcome of Sinhala nationalistic resistance that collectively has a substantial voting power
within Sri Lanka (Sahadevan, 2024). Ideological opposition promoted by the Sinhalese
nationalistic political parties continues to decry power-sharing as a threat to Sinhalese cultural
heritage and identity (Pullé and Ratnapala, 2019) and are fearful of altering the political balance
of power within the unitary structure of the state and risking their influence within the Sinhalese
majority (Pullé and Ratnapala, 2019). For example, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government
of 2015, despite promising constitutional reforms, watered down devolution proposals in the
face of opposition from Sinhalese nationalist groups (Leone, 2019; Sahadevan, 2024) and
backtracked on proposals to grant provincial Councils to the North and East (Leone, 2019).
The partisan attitudes of nationalist politicians are exemplified by Academic Researcher 839:
<[Name retracted], who is a racist and Nationalist political leader in this country,
always says that he will abolish the 13th Amendment and that it is not good for Sri Lanka
and will lead to a separate state in the North and East. So, this kind of mentality is there
in the Parliament... they do it for their political gains because they know the fact that
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unleashing racist ethno-religious ideas and Sinhalese extremism will help them to get
elected in the upcoming elections. So that is their firm feeling. That9s why they do it.=
This perception focuses on fearmongering by Sinhalese nationalism, claiming that Tamil
separatists will use Provincial Council powers to demand secession and establish a 8Tamil
homeland9 in the North and East (Wijekoon et. al., 2023). Moreover, Academic Researcher 849
notes that the rhetoric of 8separate state9 has been used for mobilising nationalist political
ideology, creating destructive divisions and downplaying Tamil minority rights and
reconciliation. Systematic suppression of rights created new grievances and deepened ethnic
divisions within communities (Peiris, 2024; Liaw et al., 2021) and were subsequently cited by
mainstream nationalist politicians as evidence of separatist threats, which in turn were used to
justify further restrictions on minority rights (Kadirgamar, 2020). Academic Researcher 849
highlights that when Tamil communities protested against land occupation by the military, their
protests were labelled as 8separatist resurgence9. Military intelligence monitored Tamil civil
society meetings, obtained detailed participant lists of community gatherings, demanded
mandatory reporting of all NGO activities to military coordination offices, and detained
civilians under the PTA (see Chapter 6) intensifying the cycle of suppression, leading to the
alienation of minority communities (Castle, 2022; Ranjan and Chattoraj, 2022). In recent years,
ultra-nationalistic groups have employed social media disinformation and misinformation
tactics that mirror historical suppression patterns (Hasangani, 2019). These groups exploit
social media algorithms to amplify hate speech and divisive content, manipulating community
voices in the process. For example, extremists create fake Facebook posts and manipulated
screenshots to stoke fear and justify the oppression of minorities. This represents an evolution
of the nationalist strategy of exploiting minority grievances to legitimise further suppression.
Social media enables real-time distortion of reconciliation efforts by framing them as threats
to national security, allowing authorities to justify shutting down genuine dialogue and bottomup reconciliation initiatives (Shinohara, 2024; Hasangani, 2022).
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Civil Society Leader 819 commented that in March of 2024, President Wickremesinghe
initiated a new path away from mainstream political narratives by 8pledging to revitalise the
existing reconciliation process9. However, this pledge produced no policy directive and
amounted to a 8peace rhetoric9. Other participants (Academic Researcher 849, Grassroots
Activist 819 and 829) claimed that this 8empty promise9 was designed to appease and attract the
minority votes for the upcoming 2024 presidential election. This promise immediately sparked
off stiff opposition from Sinhalese nationalist factions against reconciling diverse political
interests and ethnic aspirations (Sahadevan, 2024; Pushparajah and Balamayuran, 2024;
Dassanayake and Gamage, 2024). Academic Researcher 819 drew attention to the performative
nature of commitment to devolution:
<If you pay close attention, you9ll see that these politicians only bring up the 13th
Amendment when visiting the North or East or at publicity events where international
media and diplomats are present. They do this to appear as progressive. I think Tamil
people have realised by now that this is insincere. Even the Sinhalese community are
laughing at how fake this behaviour is.=
The selective timing and context chosen to discuss the 13th amendment, as illustrated
above, reveal a calculated approach to image management of the government aimed at UN aid
agencies and other foreign state interests rather than a commitment to substantive
implementation of devolution. The prevalence of political manoeuvring renders the
reconciliation process ineffective and meaningless to minority communities (Sahadevan,
2024). The political strategy adopted here can be best termed as a securitisation of peace (Mac
Ginty, 2012) with the implication that peace can only be achieved through maintaining
centralisation and not by a meaningful process of decentralisation (Sahadevan, 2024). This is
a paradoxical situation, where peace is pursued whilst simultaneously resisting the changes that
can lead to meaningful reconciliation and amity. Academic Researcher 849 explains that by
positioning centralisation as an imperative for maintaining peace and security, <nationalistic
politicians create a narrative where implementation of the 13th Amendment or any other

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genuine devolution of power through structural changes and power sharing will lead to a
destabilisation= (Fonseka and Ganeshathasan, 2025, p. 83; Sahadevan, 2024).
Civil Society participants revealed a nuanced understanding of the broader political
culture that perpetuates the ambivalence of politicians. Civil Society Leader 819 observed that:
<Even leaders who might privately support such measures are hesitant to do so
publicly, fearing a political backlash from some Sinhalese [citizens] ... This
[ambivalence] leads to a cycle of unfulfilled promises and [token] changes that fail to
address the [root] causes at the heart of [Sri Lanka9s] ethnic tensions.=
The aspiration to claim power over Sri Lanka by Sinhalese extremists is deeply ingrained
in the country9s political discourse, with the Sinhala language as its core (DeVotta, 2021) and
the ambition to maintain an undivided country (De Alwis, 2020). This political culture of
performative commitment extends unfulfilled promises and token changes that fail to address
the root causes of ethnic tensions. The result is a fragmented reconciliation landscape where
meaningful progress occurs primarily at the grassroots level.
However, according to Grassroots Activist 829, genuine reconciliation efforts cannot be
established at the ground level because those who were directly affected by the war are <aware
that their [insightful] proposals and commitments are downgraded by the political leadership
and administrators=. Local NGOs such as the National Peace Council (2025) have documented
how communities in the North and East have developed their own informal reconciliation
mechanisms, but the repeated experience of having community proposals publicly
acknowledged yet privately discarded shows affected populations that their voices are valued
only for legitimating political rhetoric and not genuine policy change. This instrumentalisation
of community input transforms reconciliation from a process of mutual recognition into a
performance that leaves power structures unchanged. When local communities witness their
carefully developed proposals being systematically excluded from implementation, it
reinforces the ethnic hierarchies that reconciliation seeks to overcome by demonstrating that
Sinhalese political authorities consider minority perspectives can be largely ignored, thereby
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sidestepping genuine reconciliation (North East Coordinating Committee, 2023). This leads to
policies designed without community input that fall short of addressing actual grievances and
needs that drive inter-ethnic tensions. I argue that a disconnect between grassroots realities and
top-down political intervention is a key challenge to effective implementation of the
reconciliation process (Nair and Sudevan, 2024). The CTF9s final report highlighted
mechanisms proposed by the community for local governance that were cited frequently in
political speeches, but were systematically excluded from policy formation and
implementation (CTF, 2016, p. 137). In the National Peace Council 2020 annual report,
community leaders have reported that their proposals were publicly referenced by political
leaders but excluded from actual policy implementation (pg. 15), leading to growing
disillusionment with formal reconciliation processes. When communities lose faith in formal
reconciliation mechanisms, they withdraw their participation from inter-ethnic dialogue
initiatives, viewing them as pointless exercises rather than meaningful opportunities for
productive engagement and change (Mohammed and Hampton, 2024). This withdrawal makes
it easier for political leaders to sideline minority concerns, further deepening the disconnect.
7.2.3 Minority Political Rights within the 13th Amendment
The next narrative that emerged from the interviews on political rights revealed a deepseated frustration among participants regarding the actual functionality of the 13th Amendment.
This observation comes following the first narrative concerning the overall scepticism on the
implementation of the 13th Amendment.
Interviews with Grassroot Activist participants revealed that the devolution of land and
police powers under Sri Lanka9s 13th Amendment (13A,1987, pp.15-16) empowers specific
administrative authorities and operational mechanisms to establish a provincial police force
under the purview of Provincial Councils (13A,1987, p. 15). Grassroots Activist 819 argues that
the devolution of police powers faced <substantial challenges and no provincial police force

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was established=. The government offered various security-related justifications and
maintained exclusive control over police, nullifying the devolution (Ramasamy, 2024).
The amendment on land powers granted significant authority to Provincial Councils,
including the right to manage state land within their territories, control land settlement schemes,
and regulate land use for agricultural and development purposes (13A,1987, p. 15). However,
Grassroots Activist 819 highlights that the central government retained ultimate authority over
8state land9, although provincial authority exists in principle. This contravenes the 13th
Amendment stipulation that <the land shall be a Provincial Council Subject= (The Sri Lankan
Constitution: Appendix II: p18) that was especially intended to address long-standing
grievances of Tamils in the North and Muslims in the East, who have experienced
marginalisation in decisions regarding land allocation and utilisation (Yusoff et. al., 2018).
This negligence mainly arises from a racial bias perpetuated by the notion of a unitary state
governed by the political hegemony of the Sinhalese majority. Academic Researcher 839
highlighted how the combination of devolution with separatism in the Southern political
imagination has created a persistent barrier to meaningful constitutional reform in the North
and East:
<If peace can only be achieved by giving a separate State to North and East, then that
is a very negative aspect largely [entrenched] in the minds of those living in Southern
Sri Lanka, and that is why, when there are discussions about constitutional reform, they
oppose it. When there are discussions about federalism, power sharing, and devolution,
they oppose it, and when there are discussions about land powers to the Provincial
Councils and police powers to the Provincial Council, they always oppose it ...=
This observation illuminates a fear-based opposition to federalism and policy proposals
on provincial powers by the Sinhalese majority. Resistance about specific powers or
administrative arrangements reflects a more fundamental anxiety about national unity deeply
embedded in Southern Sri Lankan political consciousness (Abeyrathne and Walakuluge, 2024;
Sahadevan, 2024). This contentious issue has become a 8no man9s land9 in the discourse of the
reconciliation process in the North and East, according to Academic Researcher 849. I argue
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that this 8paradox of state reform9 in Sri Lanka is a common theme running through the postwar political streams consisting of the nationalist mood, elected officials in state decisionmaking and interest groups across all ethnic divides (Subedi, 2021; Sahadevan, 2024).
Academic Researcher 849, commented that <deep-seated frustration among minority
communities on the structural limitations of Sri Lanka9s devolution framework= has been
continually distorted by centralist interpretations and practices, leading to the 8territorial
imperative in Sinhalese nationalism9. Despite provisions for devolution, the government has
maintained control through various caveats and exceptions (Agashe, 2023), for instance, the
Land Development Ordinance (No. 19 of 1939), contains specific clauses that require central
government approval for any provincial land use decisions affecting more than 50 acres. In
2013, the Northern Provincial Council was prevented by the government from implementing
its land distribution program for internally displaced war victims. Retention of state authority
over land and police powers has been viewed by many participants as a reluctance to genuinely
devolve power (Mudalige and Abeysinghe, 2021). These longstanding grievances have led to
a 8frozen conflict9 situation, where formal peace exists but underlying tensions remain
unresolved, potentially setting the stage for future conflicts (Klosek et al., 2020). Minor
adjustments to the reconciliation process are treated as superficial and lack a depth of concern
for their grievances. The provisions for establishing provincial police forces under the control
of Provincial Councils have never been fully implemented, justified by the state to curb
extremist riots and attacks since 2009 (Mudalige and Abeysinghe, 2021).
A counter-argument to the lack of political commitment was presented by Government
Administrator 819 who claimed that the government was <facing a severe shortage of necessary
funds and human resources to adequately support the operation of the provincial councils,=
hence, the effectiveness of reconciliation efforts was adversely affected. This can be supported
by two main reasons found in existing literature (Mudalige and Abeysinghe, 2021): firstly,
some of those who are qualified to work in local government positions in the North and East
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regions have left the country as refugees, and secondly, some others might have perished during
the war (Collier and Hoeffler, 2004).
A significant limitation I encountered during data collection was the lack of
documentary evidence regarding the government9s role in providing qualified personnel to
these regions through funding and skill training, suggesting a failure to prioritise capacitybuilding of personnel to be deployed in these areas (Silva, et al., 2018; Jayatilaka and
Amirthalingam, 2023; Rameez, 2020) contributing to the widening gap in public trust in the
reconciliation process (Weeratunge and Dewasiri, 2021; Silva, et al., 2018). The National
Police Commission9s internal assessments since 2019 document that only 22% of Tamilspeaking officers were deployed in areas where Tamil speakers constitute the majority.
According to a quantitative survey taken between 2018-2022, the trust deficit was reflected in
a decline of confidence in police services from 42% to 27% among Tamil-speaking
communities in the North and East (Weeratunge and Dewasiri, 2021). Failure to provide
linguistically competent police personnel has resulted in cases where victims of gender-based
violence and land disputes were unable to communicate grievances in their native language,
leading to errors in recording statements and investigations, which severely eroded community
trust in law enforcement institutions undermining trust in state interventions in the
reconciliation process (Subedi and Bulathsinghala, 2018). However, a counterpoint to the
above narrative is offered by Civil Society Leader 819:
<You can9t say that this issue is just simply a lack of resources or expertise, but what I
believe is a [deliberate] strategy by the central government to maintain control [over]
political dynamics rather than just administrative [shortcomings]=.
A broader implication arising from the above argument is that control mechanisms by
the Government aim to maintain administrative structures that supersede Provincial Council
functions, with stringent financial controls and limits set on funding requirements.
(Abeysinghe, 2020). As a result, there is a continued reliance on the Government for funding
and provision of expertise, perpetuating dependency that undermines the autonomous
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development of a robust local governance. The tension between genuine resource constraints
and political strategies of control creates administrative challenges that serve as both real
obstacles and convenient justifications for maintaining centralised authority with profound
implications for the reconciliation process. (Mallempati, 2019; Abeysinghe, 2020; Pullé, and
Ratnapala, 2019). Additionally, what might be temporary administrative challenges can
transform into permanent structural obstacles to meaningful devolution and illustrate why
technical solutions alone (such as increased funding and training) cannot address the
fundamental challenges to reconciliation.
Civil Society Leader 829 pointed out another contentious issue between Tamil and
Muslim communities over the proposed merging of Northern and Eastern Provincial Councils,
a problem largely overlooked in existing literature. Originally, the 13th Amendment provided
for a temporary merger of these provinces, which was implemented in 1988, but in 2006 were
de-merged following a Supreme Court ruling. Academic Researcher 839 emphasised the
demographic reality that shapes the current power dynamics between the two minority
communities:
<[Tamil] political leaders still demand a merged North and East Provincial Council,
which the Muslims do not like. They oppose it. They say we can9t be with Tamil Political
leaders... this merger is impossible because Muslims form the majority in the Eastern
Province. Therefore, they should have a say in the Eastern Provincial Council...Since
the beginning, the Eastern Provincial Council was largely dominated by Muslims [and
thereby] they have a stronghold in the Eastern Province=
Disagreement with the above view was voiced by Civil Society Leader 819 who claimed
that Tamil political leaders continued to advocate for a merged North-East because it would
lead to political autonomy for the Tamils who form the majority there:
<A unified North-Eastern province is essential to protect Tamil interests in our
traditional homelands. Without it, our community risks being further fragmented and
disempowered.=
This points to an ideological and political polarity based on administrative boundaries
and power-sharing (Abeyrathne and Walakuluge, 2024). For Tamil communities, the merger
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represents a mechanism to consolidate political influence and protect collective rights through
unified administrative control, whilst for Muslim communities, the same arrangement can
threaten their distinct political identity and representation rights within local governance
structures (Goodhand, Klem and Walton, 2020; Abeyrathne and Walakuluge, 2024). The
question of merger challenges how reconciliation aims can be achieved whilst balancing
competing minority political interests within the same geographical space (Abeyrathne and
Walakuluge, 2024). According to media reports, numerous attempts to revive merger
discussions faced resistance, not only from the government but also from within minority
communities themselves (Colombo Telegraph, 2016; The Island, 2022). The 13th Amendment,
although intended to devolve power, turned out to be a flashpoint for intercommunal tensions.
This crisis highlighted a fundamental divergence in political aspirations between the two
communities (Wickramaratne, 2021).
Academic Researcher 849 highlights that <when the institutional framework for
protecting minority political rights becomes a source of inter-communal tension, it undermines
the very purpose of devolution as a mechanism for reconciliation=. Between 2016 and 2021,
both Tamil and Muslim political representatives raised concerns about administrative
arrangements that dilute political power, affecting their communities9 ability to effectively
advocate for their interests (Abeyrathne and Walakuluge, 2024; Yusoff, Sarjoon, and Zain,
2019). The rise of radical Muslim political parties, such as the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress
(SLMC), resulted in a convoluted political landscape as Government Administrator 819
observed:
<The SLMC has given Muslims a stronger political voice, but it9s also been accused by
some Tamil leaders of fragmenting minority unity. There9s a constant balancing act
between advocating for specific Muslim concerns and cooperating on broader minority
rights issues.=
Tamil politicians generally advocated for greater autonomy or separation, whilst Muslim
political leaders favoured a more integrationist approach, similar to the sentiments of the
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Sinhalese majority (Goodhand et al., 2020), seeking to secure their rights and interests within
the framework of a unitary Sri Lankan state. My empirical analysis suggests that this
divergence has led to suspicions between the Muslim and Tamil communities. Some Tamil
politicians have accused Muslim leaders of aligning with Sinhalese-dominated governments at
the expense of broader minority rights (Goodhand et al., 2020). Ethnically rooted standpoints
of Tamil and Muslim political parties have reached a stalemate because neither minority is
willing to change their political stance (Rameez and Fowsar, 2024).
This ideological impasse has broader implications for both communities9 ability to build
effective political institutions to protect their interests, because it allows the government to
maintain centralised control, citing inter-communal tensions for rejecting political autonomy
(Abeyrathne and Walakuluge, 2024). As a result, Tamil and Muslim communities find their
collective political rights compromised (Rameez and Fowsar, 2024). I argue that these
conflicting political aspirations and entrenched ideological standpoints stand as severe
obstacles to promoting concerted efforts for a holistic reconciliation.
7.3 Minority Language Rights

7.3.1 Language as a Marker of Identity and Power
One of the challenges in the existing reconciliation process discussed by Academic
Researcher 849, Civil Society Leaders 819 and 829 is the absence of comprehensive language
rights. Lack of opportunity to effectively communicate in one9s language when engaging with
state institutions undermines a fundamental right. The Official Languages Act of 1956 and
subsequent provisions, including the 13th and 16th Amendments to the Constitution,
established Tamil as an official national language alongside Sinhala, with English designated
as a link language (Article 12(2) embodied in Chapter III). This constitutional framework
established a more inclusive linguistic policy, requiring public services to be available in all
three languages and mandating trilingual administration capability across government

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institutions. Post-war reconciliation policies have acknowledged bilingual language rights
through the National Policy Framework for Social Integration (NPFSI) (2012), which
emphasised the importance of the Tamil language in public administration. However,
documented evidence shows significant gaps between legal stipulations and practical
implementation. Academic Researcher 849, Civil Society Leaders 819 and 829 ascribed this to a
8linguistic identity9 adopted by communities to establish rigid linguistic demarcations between
themselves and their perceived 8other9 in post-war Sri Lanka. Academic Researcher 849 offers
an explanation:
<The matter of language rights is a big problem. Even though Sinhala and Tamil are
national languages with equal importance, people prefer to speak in their <mother
tongue= …Because they sense that engaging with the 8other9 language might diminish
their cultural identity and erode the sense of linguistic superiority they have cultivated.=
This highlights two important aspects: firstly, language rights occupy a central position
in social and individual identity, preserving one9s ethnic identity and particularly the 8mother
tongue9. The protection of mother tongue usage has become a crucial mechanism for all
communities to maintain their cultural identity and transmit their heritage (Wyss, 2020; Perera
and Khodos, 2024). Secondly, language reinforces existing power structures where one
linguistic group is dominant, and inclusion of the minority language by members of the
dominant group might be seen as conceding power (Jayathilaka et al., 2022; Wyss, 2020;
Jayawickrama and Ekanayake, 2024). Civil Society Leader 819 emphasised that both Sinhala
and Tamil languages are <deeply intertwined with ethnic, cultural, and political identities=,
playing a decisive role in shaping individual and collective self-perceptions and inter-group
dynamics (Jayathilaka et al., 2022).
The roots of this linguistic divide can be traced back to an elevation of the British
coloniser9s language over the two main native Sri Lankan languages, Sinhala and Tamil (See
Chapter 2) (Jayathilaka et al., 2022; Wyss, 2020). The policy of English as an official language
aligns with what Pennycook (2006, p.26) terms a 8colonial celebratory9 position, which led to
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a disproportionately favourable position for the Tamil population because rapid English
education was made accessible to the Tamils during British rule. According to Academic
Researcher 849, this led to a disadvantageous position for the Sinhalese who were not conversant
with English and contributed to a strong belief that both their language and identity were being
rendered 8unworthy9, thereby fueling a deep-seated animosity between them and the Tamils.
The notion of linguistic separatism (Herath, 2015; DeVotta, 2004) was entrenched in the postindependence socio-political fabric with the advent of the Sinhala-only policy, which in turn
led to the alienation of the Tamil population. Academic Researcher 829 elaborates on this issue:
<One must not forget that the lasting effects of British rule still [loom] large.
Generations born into a newly independent Sri Lanka carried [forward] their parents9
anger, and this cannot be ignored. We must acknowledge that this is also a trauma we
went through if we are to move forward with any type of reconciliation. Families lost a
great deal during those days and continued to lose more in subsequent years due to
civil war and political instability. Because nearly [40 years] after independence, we
had the civil war. We feel lost in our own land…generations grew up [within a climate
of] hatred and trauma=.
The role of collective emotions is important in critically analysing the 8everyday9
reconciliation process present on the ground. When communities experience severe trauma,
language often transforms into a shared medium for preserving cultural identity (Leese,
Crouthamel, and Köhne, 2021). Academic Researcher 829 and Grassroot Activist 819also noted
this emotional dimension that creates a binary opposition between 8us9 and 8them9 polarised
during the conflict, reasserting cultural distinctiveness and group solidarity in both Sinhalese
and Tamil communities. This dynamic, as highlighted by Academic Researcher 829, operated
at <both conscious and unconscious levels, influencing how Sinhalese and Tamils perceived
and interacted with each other=. Deep-seated emotional responses to the historical violence
and oppression permeated intersections of identity, power, and survival in the post-war
reconciliation era (Divakaran, 2023).
However, this argument is challenged by other participants. Grassroot Activist 829 and
Academic Researcher 849 point out that in the post-war context, a complicated dynamic has
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emerged in the 8everyday9 reconciliationary interactions between Tamils and Sinhalese: on the
surface, there appears to be <a façade of tolerance and acceptance by members of both
communities engaging in routine social and economic interactions= - what Academic
Researcher 849 terms as 8impression management9, where individuals and groups present an
amicable front in public although harbouring deeper, conflicting emotions privately. Grassroots
Activist 829 observes that underlying emotions on unresolved trauma and lingering mistrust
created tensions that were triggered by perceived threats to cultural dominance, disrupting the
fragile balance of coexistence and adversely affecting positive participation in reconciliation
efforts. Within this dichotomy of understanding by my participants, I argue that emotional
attachments to language and associated cultural identities remain potent, albeit at the latent
level, rather than at the manifest level. At the manifest level, people may participate in
reconciliation initiatives and engage in cross-cultural dialogue, appearing to have moved
beyond linguistic divisions. However, Academic Researcher 849 highlights that unresolved
trauma and deep-seated emotional connections to language continue at the latent level,
influencing their identity and worldview, and lead to a perfunctory performance that does not
support [a holistic] reconciliation. This public 8performance9 of harmony can be interpreted as
emotional labour (Hochschild, 2003), where individuals regulate and manage their emotions
and conform to social expectations of peace and cooperation. I contend that the post-war
context seems to have established 8feeling rules9 (socially shared guidelines that inform how
we ought to feel in given situations), that dictate the suppression of negative emotions in public
interactions for the sake of social stability (Hochschild, 2003). This relationship between
8feeling rules9 and 8emotional labour9 thus reveals a contradiction observed within the Sri
Lankan reconciliation process. Whilst some literature (Gunatilleke, 2020; Rajapakse, 2024;
Mallawaarachchi, 2020) points out that in the Sri Lankan context, these social guidelines are a
necessary foundation for daily coexistence, Academic Researcher 849 highlights that by

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projecting a false sense of 8progress9 in reconciliation, underlying emotional tensions can easily
fracture small but important gains reached.
Another narrative emerges from a discussion with Academic Researcher 819, that there is
a collective unwillingness to learn the other language, stemming from attitudes of linguistic
and cultural otherness, and is evident in local political governance and administration spaces.
Noted by Academic Researcher 839, this situation is prevalent across all districts, leading to a
<diminished public trust in political and administrative institutions=. Unilingual Tamil women
are disproportionately affected in service provision encounters due to language discrimination,
and they are hesitant to bring forward complaints against public institutions (Ramasamy, 2018).
The general lack of respect and recognition (Fraser, 2000) amounts to a failure of the state to
adequately recognise linguistic diversity. Grassroots Activist 819, Civil Leaders 819 and 829
reported similar <embodied experiences of discrimination and exclusion= when engaging with
Sinhalese officers employed within government services despite the provision of formal Tamil
language training. Grassroots Activist 839 reflects how this discrimination becomes
incorporated into their daily lived experience by 8carrying it along with them as a constant9
undergoing visceral stress reactions when accessing essential government services,
highlighting how reconciliation failure becomes inscribed on minority bodies through repeated
encounters with exclusion. Each encounter with monolingual Sinhala service delivery
convinces Tamil speakers that their linguistic equity is incompatible with full citizenship,
preventing the promotion of mutual recognition. Routine experiences of linguistic exclusion
by minorities indicate a source of disadvantage, reinforcing zero-sum thinking where one
group9s linguistic comfort necessarily comes at the expense of another9s access to services.
This conditioning creates barriers to reconciliation that persist even when individuals
consciously desire ethnic harmony, making trust-building across communities difficult to
achieve.

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This very humanistic aspect of 8everyday9 reconciliation further illustrates how language
discrimination operates as a form of symbolic violence that assaults minority citizens9 sense of
belonging and citizenship rights, undermining possibilities of genuine reconciliation.
Academic Researcher 849 notes:
<Even though government officers are given formal training to speak and write Tamil
[language], many of them don9t care to. They would only address you in Sinhala when
you talk to them.=
As pointed out by my participant, the phrase 8they would only address you in Sinhala9
suggests a form of passive resistance to linguistic inclusion. This represents a power dynamic
for asserting dominance and maintaining the majority Sinhala language in social hierarchies
that can perpetuate the systemic discrimination faced by Tamil minorities (Wyss, 2020;
Lekamlage, 2022). However, I note that the reluctance to achieve bilingual proficiency is
prevalent among both Sinhalese and Tamil government officers, which has become
increasingly apparent during my data collection.
Government Administrator 819 provided 8political reasons9 behind the reluctance to
become proficient in both languages, such as concerns about job security, cultural identity, and
fears due to changing power dynamics within government administration. The existing
literature recognises cultural identity as a crucial political factor, where language proficiency
becomes intertwined with loyalty to one9s linguistic and cultural group (Wyss, 2020;
Lekamlage, 2022). Ultra-nationalistic Sinhalese officers view Tamil language proficiency as
an acknowledgement of declining Sinhala linguistic dominance within government institutions
(Amarasinghe, 2021). This stems from anxieties about shifting power dynamics and cultural
preservation within the majority Sinhalese bureaucratic structure, which can negatively affect
reconciliation initiatives at the local level (Wyss, 2020).
Civil Society Leader 819, notes that whilst some ultra-nationalistic Sinhalese officers
resist using the Tamil language, many others fear losing career advancement, resulting in selfcensorship, compromising their ability to serve the communities (Hoole and Hoole, 2019).
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Despite the government9s mandate on language proficiency in both Tamil and Sinhala, a factor
in determining promotions, Government Administrator 819 points out that many officers have
circumvented this requirement, revealing a significant gap between policy intent and practical
implementation. However, I draw attention to an anomaly noted by my participant, who stated
that <very few government officers genuinely decided to do so= to emphasise how exceptional
it is for officials to fulfil language obligations guaranteed by the Constitution.
Civil Society Leader 819 highlighted that many police officers use political allegiances
to avoid learning Tamil, thus contributing to nullifying constitutional guarantees of language
rights. This does not necessarily represent individual recalcitrance, but a systematic pattern
where administrative structures meant to implement language rights have become tools for
their circumvention. I emphasise that this 8non-performativity of antiracism9 (Ahmed, 2006,
p.104) - the formal acknowledgement of language rights through policy, followed by their
systematic neutralisation through political patronage networks, represents why official
reconciliation policies serve as perfunctory gestures instead of effecting genuine change
(Jayathilaka et al., 2022). Hence, I reason that failure of language rights implementation is not
necessarily a matter of insufficient resources and political will, but an inherent systematic
process where policies are transformed into perfunctory gestures (Ratnayake, 2024; Jayathilaka
et al., 2022). 8Political exclusion through language9 has become a symbolic and practical
barrier to inclusive governance that promotes reinforcement of marginalisation of minorities
(Jayathilaka et al., 2022p. 105; Ratnayake, 2024) and also creates a trickle-down effect where
state officials are less inclined to follow official language policy, constituting a form of
symbolic violence, strengthening language hierarchies powered by exclusion.

7.3.2 Language Barriers in 8Everyday9 Spaces
A key narrative that emerged from the discussions on language barriers is the power
dynamics inherent in linguistic practices within post-war Sri Lanka. Discrimination of

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language manifests at different levels of governance and in social interactions, creating a multilayered obstacle to genuine reconciliation. Academic Researcher 829 uses the term 8linguistic
capital9 to highlight how language proficiency serves as a form of social and cultural capital
that determines access to resources and opportunities. Proficiency in multiple languages can
serve as a facilitator tool in ethnic power struggles exposed to the international community,
and a corrective to the Sinhalese nationalists who perceive linguistic rights as a threat to their
political dominance.
A recent experience of Grassroot Activist 839 at the Registrar General9s Department in
Colombo, the Capital of Sri Lanka, illustrates the prevalence of language discrimination:
<One of the most problematic issues is the lack of bilingual staff, even in Colombo. I
once went to the Colombo Registrar General9s office to get a copy of my birth
certificate. The lady at the counter couldn9t understand my broken Sinhala, so I tried
speaking in Tamil. But she didn9t understand that either. She told me to wait and turned
around to ask one of her colleagues, with a very annoyed look, if the [officer] who
spoke Tamil was there. Apparently, that person had gone out, and I had to wait almost
an hour before he came to help me. This whole process was an embarrassing and
annoying [ordeal] for me, and it seemed that having bilingual employees in one of
Colombo9s busiest government offices was considered an 8accommodation9 rather than
a necessity.=
My participant9s narrative reveals that a lack of adequate bilingual staff can transform
routine civil administration tasks into experiences of marginalisation and limit the commitment
to linguistic inclusion, a basic requirement of the reconciliation process. (Jayathilaka et al.,
2022).
Another critical issue noted by multiple participants concerns a scarcity of Tamil and
Muslim female police officers in the national police force, especially in areas where Tamil is
the majority language, which negatively affects ongoing reconciliation efforts. Academic
Researcher 839 highlighted how this has hampered reporting on crimes, accessing emergency
services, and complying with routine administrative matters:
<If you go to the police station in Jaffna or Kilinochchi, or Mullaitivu, or Vavuniyathe entire police personnel is comprised of Sinhalese and if you go to Eastern Province
- the same thing… because of the language barrier they have been encountering
[difficulties] for many, many decades in the North and East.=
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Linguistic discrimination prevalent in the police force presents a significant obstacle for
Tamil-speaking citizens, especially for women, when seeking assistance at police stations.
According to current estimates, 634 Tamil and 12 Muslim female police officers are employed
in the police force throughout the country, in comparison with 17,110 Sinhalese female police
officers (UNDP, 2020). The minority gender disparity among Tamil female police officers can
be attributed to recruitment policies that established severe limitations during the Civil War,
especially in the Northern and Eastern provinces, due to concerns of espionage undertakings
for the LTTE. The small number of Muslim female police officers in the police force stems
mainly from religious and cultural constraints. Despite media reports that former Tamil excombatants would be eligible to apply for positions in the police force, there has been no
official confirmation on the implementation of this policy (Haviland, 2012). In any case, many
female ex-combatants whose education was severely disrupted by the war face barriers to
entering the police force due to gaps in their formal education.
The reluctance of women to visit a police station to file a complaint revealed deep-rooted
cultural norms and gender stereotypes prevalent in Sri Lanka (Höglund, 2019). Civil Society
Leader 819 pointed out that a conservative social norm exists, especially in the rural areas,
where it is <unfitting for a woman to visit a police station= to file a complaint. In the North
and East, the absence of Tamil-speaking female police officers creates a barrier for unilingual
Tamil women seeking assistance, resulting in misunderstandings, improper recording of
complaints on sexual harassment and abuse, and miscarriages of justice (Höglund, 2019;
Brounéus et al., 2024; Deane, 2022). The resulting trust deficit undermines confidence in law
enforcement, hindering effective police-community cooperation, which is a crucial element in
post-conflict reconciliation. This highlights how discrimination operates in many invisible
ways (Brounéus et al., 2024; Deane, 2022), and creates a lived experience of exclusion and
marginalisation for Tamil-speaking citizens, reinforcing their 8subaltern9 status (Spivak, 2023,
p.3).
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This systemic bias is also present in government education sectors, especially in
universities. Academic Researcher 839 elaborated that,
<In the [universities south of the Northern Province] we don9t have this 2-language
policy. Information is circulated mostly in the Sinhala language…even for Tamil
university staff .... We sometimes get Ministry letters and circulars in the Sinhala
language, and we [have to] confront [the university authorities] and then only we get
it translated… They [university officials] say 8we don9t have translators to do this but
we will try our best to address this problem in the future9. In some instances, they
translate the Sinhala notices and circulars into English and put them on the notice
board. That9s it… That is not an excuse… That is the problem of the institution.=
Marginalisation of the Tamil language in Sri Lankan universities reflects how racism is
deeply embedded in societal structures and institutions. Academic Researcher 839 argues that
the failure of senior officials in the Higher Education Ministry to promote a representative
academic workforce in universities is not an administrative oversight, but a <reflection of
deeper institutional racism operating in [subtle] ways=. According to my participants from the
universities, this manifests through recruitment practices favouring Sinhala speakers,
promotion criteria disadvantaged Tamil-speaking academics, and resource allocation
prioritising academic programs conducted in the Sinhala medium (Jayathilaka et al., 2022).
Shortage of Tamil-speaking academics has resulted in a dearth of research projects conducted
in Tamil, reduced availability of academic supervision for Tamil-speaking students, and limited
capacity to develop Tamil-language academic resources (Jayathilaka et al., 2022; Selvaratnam
et al., 2024; Perera and Khodos, 2024).
Another key sector affected by language disparity is healthcare, especially through
government-owned hospitals and dispensaries (Selvaratnam et al., 2024). Multiple Grassroots
Activists state that this has adversely affected unilingual Tamil women with health-related
issues, largely due to a lack of knowledge of the Tamil language by healthcare personnel. This
situation is illustrated by Grassroots Activist 819 through observations made during a field visit:
<Back in 2015, I did research in Putlam about the women heads of the household... So
they had a problem where a lot of IDPs who hardly speak any Sinhala. So when they
initially had to go to hospitals to get the basic services they had a big problem …Sinhala
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speaking doctors on call couldn9t understand their complaints [made in Tamil
language].=
In the context of the current reconciliation process, unequal access to the provision of
healthcare due to language barriers has posed a barrier to building trust and amounts to a form
of structural and epistemic violence (Selvaratnam et al., 2024). Grassroots Activist 829 contends
that due to language disparities in healthcare, minority language speakers in Sri Lanka are
unable to communicate their health concerns and obtain medical advice. This amounts to
<compromising on their health outcomes, and a reinforcement of marginalisation and
perceptions of second-class citizenship.=

7.3.3 The Concept of <Mother Tongue=
The discussion hitherto centres upon the concept of 8mother tongue9 in Sri Lanka, which
existing literature on the reconciliation process fails to take into account. Many participants
observed that the notion of a national mother tongue in Sri Lanka aligns closely with the
majority9s language, Sinhala, as a site of 8everyday9 reconciliation struggle in how linguistic
identity becomes weaponised through nationalist narratives. This perspective is problematic
in a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual society and has far-reaching implications for national unity and
reconciliation (Jayathilaka et al., 2022). The term 8mother tongue9 itself is gendered, often
associating language with maternal transmission and thus situating linguistic identity with
notions of family and cultural continuity (Waldorf and Premaratna, 2024). This is exemplified
by Grassroots Activist 829 who commented that,
<Most mothers tell wartime stories to their young ones... The blood and the killings...but
I must tell you that many of them did not blame the Sinhalese people...mostly
politicians.= The blame is placed on the politicians ...=
The rise of post-war Sinhalese extremist nationalistic groups, such as the BBS (Bodu
Bala Sena), promoting the concept of 8Sinha-lé9 (meaning Sinhala blood), along with ultranationalistic rhetoric by politicians, has embedded the mother tongue as a sacrosanct concept
in Sri Lankan society. The concept of a unilingual mother tongue, tied to the Sinhalese ideology
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of being the rightful owners of the homeland, promotes land-based political power as discussed
in Chapter 6. Academic Researcher 849 has noted that this has surfaced in the 8public domain9
in the post-reconciliation phase, where the tensions between reconciliation promises and
nationalist resistance compete. This is particularly evident in national events, as highlighted by
Academic Researcher 839:
<The national anthem is only sung in Sinhalese language in the Independence Day
celebrations, right? Once we had it in both languages when Sirisena was President in
2015 as a monumental step in reconciliation. However due to extremist nationalistic
agendas they [successive governments] stopped [it].=
This observation points to a noteworthy issue: the politicisation of language in national
ceremonies works against inclusive principles of the reconciliation process. Rendering the
national anthem only in the Sinhala language sends a strong message of conscious and
intentional political choice, and illustrates how nationalist agendas work to undo established
reconciliation measures of granting political and language rights to minorities. An
overemphasis on the Sinhala language, perpetuating ethnic nationalism, and silencing subaltern
voices has created anxieties among already polarised communities (Subedi, 2022).
7.4 Bottom-Up Activism: Meaningful Dialogue
7.4.1 Storytelling and Community-Led Peacebuilding
Following the two previous sections, minority rights are considered fundamental to the
current reconciliation process, and as such, the role of grassroots and civil society initiatives in
addressing minority rights warrants careful attention. Grassroots Activist 819 highlights that
despite limited state-led initiatives for genuine reconciliation, small-scale grassroots
organisations have undertaken an important role with limited resources to address anomalies
in the ongoing reconciliation and peacebuilding efforts and developed local programs that can
contribute towards some degree of reconciliation at the community level. Grassroots Activist
819 spoke about political rights awareness programs conducted daily within small communities:
<In the North, grassroots communities have organically formed to conduct political
rights awareness sessions. I worked with one [initiative] where local Tamil women
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received financial educational grants to study politics and civic rights, which
successfully increased [interest] in local governance participation among women [in
the Northern region]. However, [the] success and community engagement in these
programs, securing continued funding from local government, remains a big challenge,
making it difficult to sustain these sessions.=
The sustainability and scalability of these initiatives face impediments, creating a
significant barrier to the broader reconciliation process of inclusivity. Bottom-up political
rights awareness initiatives are valuable vehicles for fostering 8everyday9 reconciliation
activities, but their effectiveness in addressing systematic challenges in post-war reconciliation
is hampered by insufficient support from the government (Scholtens and Bavinck, 2018;
Spring, 2025). Commenting on grassroots initiatives that help minimise language disparity,
Civil Society Leader 819 observes that a grassroots-based program has helped Tamil women
from the North to learn Sinhala and English languages to communicate with local and foreign
tourists in promoting and selling their produce:
<We have language programs [conducted at the micro level] – sometimes these are
funded by NGOs, sometimes [these are] locally funded through grassroots organisations
– [held]especially for women heads of households who want to sell their produce or other
handmade items to foreigners...=
As highlighted, these programs demonstrate how bottom-up community-led initiatives
can address practical needs and also tackle reconciliation challenges such as marginalisation
through language barriers. Grassroots Activist 829 points to the 8questionable role9 adopted by
the state, highlighting a disconnect between official reconciliation rhetoric and practical
support for integration initiatives such as language education to be undertaken by the local
authorities in the North and East. The burden of fostering genuine reconciliation is left largely
to community-level actors, who navigate both resource constraints and structural barriers
whilst attempting to bridge linguistic and political divides (Scholtens and Bavinck, 2018;
Perera, 2018). When asked if the state offers any free language programs for citizens, the
activists replied that there were none in operation. However, existing literature points to a new
government initiative for the establishment of a national language project aimed at fostering
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<respect for linguistic diversity and trilingualism, thus enhancing relationships between
different communities= (Herath, 2015, p. 245). Commenting on the inconsistencies in granting
minority community rights, Government Administrator 819 contends that an unspoken bias
exists where the government does not actively initiate programs to facilitate both Sinhala and
Tamil languages that would create a cultural bridge between these two communities.
In spite of the merits, I have come across a notable weakness in bottom-up programs:
these are only limited attempts to foster a productive dialogue between different communities
on the 8basic technicalities9 involved in reconciliation efforts (Scholtens and Bavinck, 2018).
The focus is primarily on enabling minorities to learn the majority language. Whilst providing
some benefits, these do not create opportunities for meaningful reconciliation efforts among
different communities (Scholtens and Bavinck, 2018) because a deeper understanding of intercommunity relations is not dealt with. In addition to peacebuilding programs conducted by
civil society and grassroots organisations, NGOs have also taken an active role in addressing
language barriers. Academic Researcher 819 further illustrated this point:
<In the North, one NGO worked voluntarily in hospitals. They identified patients9
language preferences and raised awareness among hospital staff. At the admission
office, a volunteer from the NGO would ask, 8What is your preferred language?9 If the
patient said Tamil, they would be given a card with a specific colour, like yellow or
green, and then assigned to a Tamil-speaking doctor. These are simple measures that
can create a more inclusive approach which is not really present in other government
hospitals.=
This is an example where NGOs are active in implementing practical solutions to
language barriers in healthcare, promoting inclusivity and better access for minorities. The
assistance provided by NGOs was appreciated by some participants (Academic Researchers),
whilst others, such as Grassroots Activist 819, offered contrasting perspectives:
<Although I think NGOs do a lot of important work in terms of reconciliation and
[provide] funding for small grassroots organisations, I believe some [NGOs] simply
don9t have a genuine interest in the people. [Name Retracted] International NGO is
famous for conducting day-to-day programs and when their allocated budget is over,
they go back. When they go back there is no one to take up this work and we are left
with where we started.=
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This critique raises important observations about the long-term sustainability of reconciliation
initiatives on the ground by external NGOs. Civil Society Leader 829 highlights how local
micro-level collectives represent a more enduring peacebuilding model. These manifest in the
formation of collective entities, such as mutual aid and community service initiatives, language
skills training workshops, and social assistance to vulnerable community members (AWWA,
2020). These micro-level collectives operate through regular group meetings, collaborative
project planning, and the collective experience of positive changes (AWWA, 2018). The
structure of these associations encourages members to transition from victims of conflict to
active participants in the reconciliation process. Civil Society Leader 829 alluded to a language
program for IDPs funded by a local church that they have been conducting for the past five
years, demonstrating a lasting impact: <This program has been very successful because we9ve
helped many IDPs from Mullaitivu to have a basic comprehension of Sinhala.= Unlike the
short-term NGO approach, my participant exemplifies how this locally rooted initiative centres
on 8everyday9 peace mechanisms that can provide 8consistent support9. This is noteworthy, as
bottom-up reconciliation initiatives can be considered as projects with specific 8structural
arrangements9 rooted within the community to reap benefits over a period of time.
Although bottom-up peacebuilding and grassroots activism for language rights were
especially highlighted during my participant discussions, Grassroots Activist 829 pointed out
small-scale, inter-ethnic peacebuilding programs that they conducted, foregrounding intercommunity dialogue advocating language rights and participating in larger reconciliation
processes with other ethnic groups.
<We have this program where many young women [from different ethnic backgrounds]
get together to engage in different activities. They tell stories to each other through
various mediums: some women share stories in their own way about their childhood
experiences during the war. Others, who were ex-combatants and have lost their
families because of the war, cook foods that they have a connection with – dishes they
remember preparing with their mothers, which takes them back in time. Some women
draw, while others sew. This is a beautiful thing to witness because, in this group,
everyone is creating genuine, supportive connections.=
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This further illustrates the dimensions of 8everyday9 peace that emerge through ordinary
activities, from cooking to sharing stories, weaving reconciliation directly into routine
8everyday9 practices and creating a different entry point for sharing experiences and building
trust. These decolonial participatory methodologies, particularly storytelling and narrative
composition, serve as potent mechanisms for disseminating the lived experiences of
community members, articulating the ramifications of conflict and violence on their 8everyday9
existence (Premachandra, 2023; Ware et al., 2025; Deane, 2021).
The significance of storytelling practices lies in the ability to create 8alternative9
historical records that challenge dominant state narratives, formal state testimonies, and official
documentation (see Chapter 5). Grassroots storytelling allows women to articulate their own
experiences in ways that preserve their memories of a traumatic period (Premachandra, 2023).
For instance, in the Northern Province, women9s groups have established 8storytelling circles9
where mothers who lost children during the conflict share their traumatic experiences on not
just of loss, but how they rebuilt their lives by interweaving 8everyday9 challenges including
accessing government services in a non-native language, and articulating deeper trauma from
the conflict that official reconciliation processes typically overlook (Premachandra, 2023;
Deane, 2021). Grassroots Activist 829 highlights that the experiences of the marginalised
women play a pivotal role in the reconciliation process, as they directly convey a diverse array
of experiences related to structural forms of violence, such as systematic language-based
discrimination in accessing public services. By facilitating local communities, grassroots actors
surface the multifaceted nature of conflict and delineate an inclusive approach to reconciliation
consonant with the lived realities of affected populations. In doing so, this approach transcends
conventional political archetypes of top-down liberal peacebuilding by offering a holistic
conceptualisation of reconciliation.

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7.4.3 Youth-Led Initiatives
Another positive trend observed is youth mobilisation in reconciliation efforts. As noted
by Civil Society Leader 829, there is a propensity for young people to break down barriers of
ethnic polarisation and form multi-ethnic friendships. Civil Society Leader 829 provides an
insightful observation:
<Children are now more interested in sharing their similar traditions through various
new ways. They have found a new appreciation for music and dramas that go viral in
both languages. When they go to university, they are open to learning their friends9
languages.=
This trend is a positive development in inter-community relations, representing a
spontaneous form of 8everyday9 reconciliation that emerges from lived experience, suggesting
that when freed from the institutional constraints and historical baggage that shape adult
interactions, younger generations naturally gravitate toward inclusion and cross-cultural
engagement. This 8organic9 process demonstrates how 8everyday9 reconciliation can occur
through shared contemporary interests, curiosity about cultural differences, and the natural
social bonds that form when young people interact in spaces relatively insulated from the ethnic
polarisation that dominates formal political discourse. Civil Society Leader 829 further posits:
<The youth have also taken this peacebuilding on their own terms. My son has this set
of friends who are a mixed group – there are also many Sinhalese and Muslims in that
group. What I find nice is that through TikTok and YouTube, they are creating videos
of themselves cooking different foods and showcasing various traditions from their own
[ethnic] cultures. For example, one of these videos was about how weddings look
[across different] communities, like Tamil, Sinhalese, or Muslim. When I see this, I get
emotional…Because we didn9t get to have this experience – we were taught to hate
each other[other nationalities] inside our own homes..=
This generational divide highlights how 8everyday9 reconciliation efforts continue to
struggle against decades of socialisation that portrayed ethnic differences as inherently
threatening. For younger generations, organic multiculturalism has become a revolutionary act
that challenges these inherited prejudices. Dissemination of local lived experiences and
decolonial knowledge through social media platforms also serves as a mechanism for
amplifying marginalised voices. Youth engagement and empowerment initiatives thereby plays
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a crucial role in mitigating hate speech, stereotypes, and prejudices by sharing narratives related
to war and violence (Lokumannage, 2019; Hirblinger et al., 2024). Grassroots Activist 819 and
829 spoke about digital storytelling as a useful medium for young individuals to articulate their
concerns over community issues and promote social cohesion by showcasing content that
humanises ethnic 8others9.
However, youth digital spaces also risk amplifying hate speech, disinformation, and
ethnic antagonisms when left unmoderated to serve political manipulation. These risks are
heightened under regulatory frameworks such as the 2024 Online Safety Act, which, whilst
intended to curb misinformation, has raised concerns about surveillance, censorship, and
selective enforcement, stifling dissent and restricting grassroots creativity (Hirblinger, 2025;
Hattotuwa and Wickremesinhe, 2022). This means that youth peacebuilders are operating in
contested and sometimes hostile digital environments, where their messages of coexistence
compete with algorithmically amplified hate narratives. Moreover, many youth initiatives
remain isolated and under-resourced, lacking long-term support and integration into national
reconciliation strategies, and as a result, bottom-up digital reconciliation projects are vulnerable
to marginalisation on the ground (Hirblinger, 2025; K.C. and Whetstone, 2024).
Therefore, holistic reconciliation requires both interpersonal understanding and
fundamental structural transformation of political and language rights within state institutions.
Younger generations are more open to cross-cultural engagement, and can help break cycles of
taught hatred and intergenerational trauma to build interpersonal connections, although this
openness alone cannot overcome the institutional resistance to implementing constitutional
guarantees of broader minority rights. (Lokumannage, 2019). However, Civil Society Leader
819 notes that this positive trend is primarily, <observed among younger people and that older
[generations are slow] to appreciate the positive outcome of multiculturalism, [whilst
doggedly] hanging onto age-old divisive norms of nationalism=.

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The generational divide highlights the need to address disparities in attitudes and
engagement between generations to promote comprehensive reconciliation efforts and
emerging narratives that are far-reaching for the ongoing reconciliation process. This organic
form of integration and mutual understanding could lay the groundwork for a more cohesive
society in the future. As the youth grow into occupying leadership roles, their multicultural
perspectives and experiences may inform more inclusive policies and practices. However, the
persistence of divisive narratives held by older generations could impede progress and create
tensions between age groups that can lead to conflicts within families and communities.
7.5 Conclusion
I conclude that minority political autonomy and language rights remain critical and
unfulfilled dimensions of Sri Lanka9s post-war reconciliation process. The implementation of
the 13th Amendment has been hampered by three key factors: declining political aspirations
among minority communities due to repeated disappointments, strong opposition for
reconciliation driven by Sinhalese nationalist sentiments, and persistent structural barriers
creating a situation where devolution exists more as a political tool for international diplomacy
than a genuine mechanism for power-sharing. The inter-communal tensions between Tamil
and Muslim communities over the proposed merger of Northern and Eastern provinces further
complicate this landscape, with competing minority interests reinforcing centralised control.
These findings lead me to conclude that Sri Lanka9s reconciliation process remains
compromised by the gap between formal policy commitments and ground-level
implementation. The interplay between political and language rights reveals that institutional
inertia, nationalist resistance, and systematic discrimination continue to perpetuate inequalities
that undermine reconciliation efforts. In the absence of meaningful state-led initiatives,
grassroots organisations and civil society actors have begun facilitating reconciliation through
innovative bottom-up approaches. One of the promising developments is the emergence of

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youth-led digital initiatives that are organically fostering inter-ethnic understanding and
cultural appreciation through digital storytelling. However, a detailed engagement with the
impacts of social media, including the circulation of mis, dis and and malinformation,
algorithmic biases, surveillance risks of digital platforms is beyond the scope of this study.
This is an area that warrants further research, especially given the increasing relevance of
online spaces in shaping post-war identity within Sri Lanka.

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CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION
8.1 Chapter Introduction
In my thesis, I have explored with a critical outlook the challenges and opportunities in
addressing the grievances of minorities in Sri Lanka since the conflict ended in 2009. The
central aim of my findings is to investigate pathways for a 8holistic reconciliation9 that bridges
reflections of 8everyday9 experiences with broader reconciliation processes and examines how
reconciliation is experienced, interpreted, and reshaped on the ground. My analysis draws on
critical feminist and post-colonial theoretical frameworks that emphasise the significance of
lived realities. This approach has enabled me to uncover how formal reconciliation mechanisms
often limit in addressing challenges faced by minority communities, whilst revealing the
innovative ways communities create their own reconciliation practices. This thesis makes a
significant contribution to post-war reconciliation academic discourse by developing and
applying the concept of 8everyday9 reconciliation to Sri Lanka9s post-2009 context, bridging
the critical gap between formal reconciliation policies and the lived experiences of minority
communities. The key contributions are: it advances existing understandings of 8everyday9
reconciliation by demonstrating how grassroots practices differ from state-led processes; it
provides an up-to-date empirical analysis of how minorities in the North and East experience
reconciliation, and, it offers a critical feminist and post-colonial perspective on the gendered
and intersectional dimensions of post-war recovery that remain largely invisible in mainstream
reconciliation discourse. In this concluding chapter, I review my empirical findings and provide
directions for a holistic reconciliation process that emerged from my empirical analysis.
8.2 Reviewing the Empirical Findings and its Overall Implications
My empirical findings are organised into three chapters: Reconciliation Policies (see
Chapter 5), Militarisation and Security (see Chapter 6) and Minority Rights and Recognition
(see Chapter 7). The narratives discussed therein are further analysed to reveal a broader

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interconnected theme that focuses on the challenges associated with the ways that people
navigate the everyday dynamics of reconciliation on the ground.
In order to understand and deconstruct the existing reconciliation process, I focused on
two official reconciliation policies of critical importance: the LLRC (2011) and the CTF
(2016), examining the notable differences in how state and non-state actors understand and
approach post-war reconciliation. My findings in Chapter 5 challenge the existing assumptions
about the efficacy of these two state-led reconciliation bodies, revealing gaps in their
implementation, lack of accessibility, and erosion of public trust. One of the key empirical
findings was the concept of 8reconciliation9 in the Sri Lankan context, which became
challenging to define conclusively because it connotes multiple meanings to the different actors
involved in the process. The government interpreted reconciliation as mainly achievable
through infrastructural development and economic restructuring to double the national per
capita income, and accordingly, policy guidelines were written down in contrast to the
aspirations of those communities affected by the war.
The government9s standpoint on reconciliation stood in contrast to the expectations of
minority groups in war-affected areas of the North and East, who prioritised tangible
reparations, including land returns and the reinstatement of political rights. My analysis
highlights that the failure to comprehend reconciliation as a broadly consensual understanding
has resulted in a misalignment of efforts and expectations. The divergence of perspectives has
raised important questions about the meaning of 8national unity9 in the ongoing reconciliation
process. This has overshadowed addressing specific grievances that require positive
discriminatory measures for minority groups in Sri Lanka. Although existing literature has
briefly acknowledged this state of affairs (for example, CPA, 2013, p.9; Silva, 2018, p.1078),
my data offers a re-examination of this confusion. The resultant alienation experienced was
substantiated by my empirical findings, particularly with regard to the delegation of vital
aspects of the reconciliation dialogue to external actors, creating the perception that the
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reconciliation is an externally driven agenda and therefore, disconnected from 8everyday9 local
realities compromising the sustainability of a 8home-grown reconciliation process9.
My empirical findings from Chapter 5 reveal the failure to assimilate the concept of
reconciliation, which is exacerbated by the inaccessibility and unavailability of testimonials
that impede truth-seeking and the formation of collective memory. These obstacles prevent the
establishment of a shared historical narrative, essential for developing mutual understanding
and empathy among different communities. My analysis uncovers that many reconciliation
initiatives are perfunctory actions, intended primarily to satisfy the expectations of
international observers instead of fostering genuine healing and lasting peace. These findings
confirm earlier research on the performative nature of such processes and their limited
effectiveness (Silva, 2018; Kapur, 2024). My research adds to the empirical gap where
8everyday9 reconciliation in Sri Lanka is underexplored, under-theorised, and under-integrated
into formal reconciliation frameworks. The shortcomings of these formal reconciliation efforts
have given rise to opportunities for community-led ventures and strategies, illustrated by
women9s cooperatives. This indicates that in instances where state-sponsored reconciliation
efforts have fallen short of expectations, community resilience has demonstrated that people
can create authentic understandings and practices of reconciliation. Moreover, these findings
build on the concept of 8everyday9 reconciliation9 by showcasing how grassroots women9s
collectives innovate in response to state neglect.
Inability to cultivate trust for genuine reconciliation caused by the prolongation of
unfulfilled promises and unimplemented recommendations have diminished public
expectations and eroded goodwill in the continuation of a reconciliation process. According to
my empirical findings, the lack of trust between the government and minority communities in
the North and East is made worse by the intense military presence, justified by the government
as a necessity for national security and economic development. In Chapter 6, I elaborate on this
situation that has created a climate of fear and mistrust. Although some existing literature
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suggested a decrease in surveillance and an improvement in freedom of expression with the
change of government in 2016 (Subedi and Bulathsinghala, 2017), my empirical findings
reveal that the government has significantly enhanced its military capabilities to regularly
conduct covert monitoring of neighbourhoods, including unannounced visits by military
intelligence officers to the homes of former LTTE members and their relatives, and Muslim
families since the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks.
These manoeuvres brought an atmosphere of oppression and fear to individuals and
communities, limiting social, economic, and political activities. Implications of surveillance
extended beyond immediate personal discomfort by altering the social fabric of Tamil and
Muslim communities, creating barriers to open dialogue, free association, and the expression
of grievances, aspects not fully addressed in existing reconciliation literature. My findings
highlight the disproportionate impact of surveillance on vulnerable groups such as female excombatants, revealing negligence of gendered concerns that impede their reintegration into
society, and perpetuating the cycle of poverty and social exclusion, hindering reconciliation
efforts. These findings extend prior literature of the specific struggles faced by female excombatants, such as surveillance, stigma, and reintegration challenges, that remain
underexplored in existing studies (Azmi, 2021; Höglund, 2019). This exemplifies the
intersectionality of gender, conflict, and reconciliation, where prioritising immediate needs
often comes at the expense of fundamental rights of women ex-combatants to fully participate
and shape the reconciliation narrative on the ground. My empirical findings highlight and add
to the existing implications of comprehensive surveillance adopted by the government on civil
society organisations, NGOs, and grassroots initiatives active in reconciliation and human
rights programs, which represent a gap in the current academic discourse.
Land appropriation in the North and East by the military for purposes of economic
development represents another significant factor obstructing the development of an inclusive
and equitable society. Empirical findings in Chapter 6 lay out local perspectives on the
133

occupation and exploitation of civilian lands, perpetuating systematic marginalisation of
minority communities through the loss of livelihoods, social status, and the erosion of
economic well-being and political rights. The inability of local government institutions to
effectively trace ownership of ancestral lands due to the destruction of legal documentation
during the war has alienated those seeking to reclaim their properties.
My empirical analysis draws attention to a governance model that supersedes civilian
concerns and prioritises security over reconciliation, leading to a lowering of legitimacy and
effectiveness of local government institutions powerless to take civilian administrative
decisions over military interests. Hassles of navigating an unresponsive administrative system
create additional barriers to reconciliation, particularly for vulnerable groups such as womenheaded households. Furthermore, my findings provide novel insights into how militarisation
alters social dynamics within communities, especially among women, by fostering divisions
based on perceived loyalty to the state. I have also focused on the expansion of military
influence over civil administration and various civilian business sectors in the Northern and
North-Eastern provinces, which has contributed to the marginalisation of these communities.
The overarching theme of lack of trust leads to the onset of pervasive scepticism among
participants on the implementation of the 13th Amendment (discussed in Chapter 7). This
scepticism can be juxtaposed with a more optimistic outlook on the amendment as a viable path
towards devolution and reconciliation encountered in earlier literature. The disparity between
these perspectives can be attributed to the implementation of the amendment by successive Sri
Lankan governments to maintain the existing power dynamics and appease international
observers at the cost of a systemic erosion in the political aspirations of minority communities,
illustrated by the regular postponement of provincial council elections. In my empirical
analysis, I have raised broader questions on the persistence to circumvent the implementation
of a transparent reconciliation process, especially amidst changing governments and shifting
policy perspectives between 2019 and 2024. I have pointed out that the reluctance to hold
134

elections is an outcome of Sinhalese nationalistic resistance, which collectively holds a votechanging power base within Sri Lanka, and fears among the main political parties of altering
the internal political balance of power and risking their political futures at the expense of
minority rights and reconciliation. By highlighting tensions between Tamil and Muslim
communities over the proposed merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces, my findings
draw attention to competing minority claims that complicate simplistic binaries of victimhood
and reconciliation, which are often overlooked in mainstream academic debates.
In Chapter 7, I have identified the absence of comprehensive language rights as a key
challenge for the ongoing reconciliation process. In alignment with Herath (2015) and Wyss
(2020), my empirical findings confirm that the marginalisation of Tamil language rights and
the dominance of Sinhala in public administration continue to hinder access to services and
reinforce exclusion. Many participants ascribed this to a linguistic identity adopted by
communities to establish rigid demarcations between themselves and their perceived <other=
in post-war Sri Lanka. In this context, I focused on the concept of mother tongue that occupies
a central position in preserving individual, ethnic and social identity, in which the dominant
linguistic group considers inclusion of minority languages as a dilution of power. This dynamic
has played a decisive role in shaping individual and collective self-perceptions and inter-group
dynamics of both Sinhalese and Tamils.
I have identified that unilingual Tamil women who are disproportionately treated during
service provision encounters are hesitant to bring complaints on language discrimination
against public institutions. My empirical evidence contributes to the existing literature on
political exclusion via language. The current linguistic divide hinders effective communication,
perpetuates misunderstanding, frustration, and animosity between the Tamil minority and the
Sinhalese majority.
The concept of 8everyday9 peace points towards intergroup interactions that can foster
peaceful coexistence by reaching a consensus on reconciliation in deeply fractured societies,
135

for instance, through the formation of collective entities, such as supporters, victims and
survivors in women9s associations. My empirical findings contribute to the limited existing
literature on youth engagement and empowerment initiatives, highlighting their role in
8everyday9 reconciliation by mitigating hate speech, stereotypes, and prejudices through the
sharing of narratives related to war and violence. Digital storytelling has emerged as a useful
medium for young individuals to articulate their concerns regarding community issues and
promote social cohesion, and represents a bottom-up strategy for peacebuilding that creates
spaces for counter-narratives and intercommunal understanding. Achieving holistic
reconciliation in Sri Lanka requires a delicate balance between addressing historical
grievances, promoting linguistic and cultural rights, and fostering genuine dialogue across all
segments of society. It necessitates a commitment from all political parties and civil society
members to put behind the rhetoric and engage in substantive action to eradicate the root causes
of the conflict and build a truly inclusive 8national identity9.
8.3 Directions for the Future
Revitalisation of the ongoing reconciliation process in post-war Sri Lanka needs to
incorporate a meaningful dialogue for overcoming linguistic divides. A civil society leader
suggested promoting youth-driven cross-cultural initiatives, and creating spaces for
intergenerational dialogue involving older citizens and survivors who experienced first-hand
the trauma and violence of the war. Central to this is a deepening of 8everyday9 reconciliation,
which is critical to bridging fractured relationships and fostering a sense of shared belonging
by incorporating dialogue mechanisms that emerge organically from within communities. I can
emphasise intra-community discussions as an essential foundation for inter-community
engagement because internally generated dialogue can reframe perceptions of diversity within
groups before facilitating conversations among formerly hostile parties. Productive crosscommunity dialogue may be problematic in the immediate post-conflict context, but carefully
orchestrated discussions as part of a long-term process can reshape relationships among
136

communities. A critical factor for implementing dialogue involves determining the appropriate
stage of reconciliation because not all conflicts are immediately ready for reconciliatory
dialogue, and communities require time before entrenched attitudes become more flexible and
meaningful discussions about minority rights can occur.
As grassroots reconciliation efforts increasingly turn to digital platforms for storytelling
and community engagement, it becomes important to examine the role of social media in
shaping narratives and perceptions across ethnic divides. Looking ahead, an important question
remains as to how the growing influence of social media, in its capacity to spread mis, dis and
malinformation, impacts trust-building, inter-communal dialogue, and the sustainability of
grassroots reconciliation efforts.
The shift towards grassroots-led reconciliation is challenging and needs to avoid
romanticising <the local= or assuming a unified civil society (Mohanty, 2006). The role of
grassroots activism is important, but should not be seen as a replacement for state
responsibility. Bottom-up initiatives should be supported and amplified by state structures,
creating a synergy between local knowledge and resources, augmented with national-level
implementation of policies. Grassroots actors should be positioned in local initiatives based on
the legitimate power and resources they possess, including local knowledge and resources, to
enhance peacebuilding efforts by the state (Brewer, 2010). A Grassroots Activist participant
highlighted that, <the Sri Lankan state9s role within this process must be [that] of a 8facilitator9
that must be actively led by the participants9 needs and rights identified in the reconciliation
process=.
Despite the political rhetoric surrounding wartime grievances, feelings of marginalisation
by minority communities, ongoing militarisation, and the lack of trust in state actions, I have
observed an organically developing reconciliation at the grassroots level. It is fostered by
genuine understanding, respect, and a commitment to face painful historical realities shared
among ethnic groups and those engaged in community services and grassroots initiatives.
137

To conclude, the journey towards reconciliation in Sri Lanka necessitates a profound
change in attitudes in the commitment to human rights, recognition of cultural and historical
wounds and victimisation of the minority communities. Until all sectors of the Sri Lankan
community are truly heard, respected, and empowered, the reconciliation process will remain
deficient in its implementation and risk slipping through the collective memory of its citizens.

138

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APPENDICES
Appendix 1. Participant Information Sheet

Information Sheet
Project title: Reconciliation in Sri Lanka: Opportunities, Challenges, and Pathways for a
Holistic Reconciliation Process
Researcher: Viduri Dediyagala
Department of Global and International Studies,
University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC)
Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, V2N 4Z9
dediyagal@unbc.ca
The Purpose of the Research
The Sri Lankan civil war between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil separatist groups
lasted for nearly 30 years before ending in 2009. The post-war period witnessed various state
efforts aimed at reconciliation and addressing the grievances of different communities.
However, the outcomes of these efforts and their impact on inter-ethnic relations and social
cohesion have been the subject of ongoing debates and assessments by different stakeholders.
The dynamics between communities, including Tamil, Sinhalese, and Muslim, as well as their
interactions with state institutions, continue to evolve and shape the broader sociopolitical
landscape.
Therefore, this research aims to investigate opportunities and challenges in existing
reconciliation processes and the dynamics of ongoing conflict. It intends to examine pathways
for holistic reconciliation centered on minorities9 self-articulated visions to foster sustainable
positive peace in Sri Lanka.
You are invited to participate due to your professional engagement and knowledge related to
the reconciliation process, either through inter-ethnic mediation programs and advocacy,
analysis of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, or policy recommendation/creation.
Details about your participation
Your participation in this research is completely voluntary: you have the freedom to decide
whether or not to take part. I respect your right to refuse participation in this research. If you
decide to participate, you can still choose to end your participation at any time, without giving
a reason. You can also refuse to answer, without giving a reason, any questions that make you
feel uncomfortable. If you withdraw from the study, any information that you have provided
up to that point will also be withdrawn and securely destroyed.
I will ask you to provide verbal consent to take part in this research at the beginning of the
interview.
If you agree to participate in this research, I will ask you to participate in a one-on-one interview
that will take place virtually through Zoom between April– June 2024, depending on your
preference. The interview will last for approximately 90 minutes and can take place on a day
and time of your choosing (including after regular working hours).

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I will also ask if you consent to be contacted a second time for an optional brief follow-up
conversation if I have additional questions or require clarification of certain points and to
review quotes that might be included in my final thesis project. This would take approximately
45 minutes and would take place between June- August 2024. If you have not received an
invitation for a follow-up interview within 3 months of your initial interview, you can assume
that no further participation will be requested from you for this study.
The interview will include questions about:
a. Reflections on conflict dynamics in post-war Sri Lanka,
b. Existing reconciliation approaches,
c. Directions for strengthening reconciliation processes,
d. Any other areas that will come to the surface during the discussion relevant to the above
inquiry
You will not be asked to share any personal experiences or political/ government views. You
will also not be asked to speak on behalf of your organisation. Interviews will be audiorecorded and transcribed only if you provide consent.
Anonymity and confidentiality
You have the right to remain anonymous (meaning it won9t be linked to your identity in any
form) in any document based on this research. Your name and any other personal information
that could lead to your identification will not be included. Any data included in my research
will be identified only by a general descriptor (e.g., 8grassroots activist,9 8government
administrator9).
Only I (Viduri Dediyagala) will have access to the information that you provide, and I will not
inform anyone of your participation in this research. All research files (including typed notes
and transcripts and recordings) will be encrypted and stored on the University of Northern
British Columbia9s (UNBC) secure server. All paper documents (e.g., handwritten notes) will
be immediately scanned, encrypted and uploaded to a secure cloud server after which all
handwritten documents will be shredded and destroyed. No identifying information will be
included in files containing information from interviews, and files will be identified only by
code numbers. Audio recordings will be retained for 5 years and other files will be retained for
10 years before being securely destroyed (electronic files will be deleted and paper files will
be shredded).
Recognising that there may be limits to confidentiality associated with organisational email
accounts, if you would prefer to use a different email address for communication regarding this
research, please indicate your preferred address in your response to the invitation email.
How your data will be used
The data collected for this study will primarily be used for the development of my graduate
thesis and potential future publication outputs (such as academic journal articles or
research/policy briefs) focussing on opportunities and limitations in the existing reconciliation
processes, since the end of the civil war in 2009. You will have the option to review any of
your quotes or statements that might be included in this article or any other research reports,
and you can identify any points that you wish to be clarified, reworded, or removed.
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A PDF copy of the final graduate thesis will be shared with you (with your consent) once it
has been published in the University9s Theses Repository.
The Anonymous data collected through these current interviews may also be used to inform
analysis for potential future publication outputs (an academic journal article or a
research/policy brief).
Risks and benefits of the research
Questions about the impacts of marginalisation may potentially lead to psychological risk
through recalling distressing memories. To mitigate these risks the interview questions will
focus on responses on broader reflections of ethnic marginalisation and reconciliation within
Sri Lanka and I will not ask about your personal experiences or political views. You can also
refuse to answer any of the questions and/or can end your participation at any time, without
giving a reason.
There are free psychological support resources located within Sri Lanka available for you to
consult whenever you feel you need assistance. Some of these resources are listed below:
a) National Mental Health Helpline (1333) - This 24/7 helpline is operated by the
Ministry of Health: https://nimh.health.gov.lk/en/tag/helpline/
b) Sumithrayo - This is a national program that offers free counseling and psychotherapy
services: https://srilankasumithrayo.lk/
c) Shanthi Maargam - This NGO provides free counseling, support groups, and
psychotherapy for individuals affected by trauma: https://shanthimaargam.org/
d) Family Rehabilitation Centre (FRC) - They offer free counseling and therapy services,
particularly for individuals affected by the civil war:
https://www.hhri.org/organisation/family-rehabilitation-centre-frc/
e) University Counseling Centers - Several universities in Sri Lanka, such as the
University of Colombo (https://cmb.ac.lk/sco ) and the University of Peradeniya
(https://site.pdn.ac.lk/centers/capsu/index.php ), offering free counseling services.
While there are no direct benefits from participating in this research, your insights will inform
the broader understanding of opportunities and challenges in existing reconciliation processes
and the dynamics of ongoing conflict since the end of the civil war. This will also help me to
develop a graduate thesis research and to inform broader policy recommendations regarding
transitional justice, power-sharing reforms, minority protections, ameliorating hate speech, and
holistic reconciliation measures to build an inclusive and peaceful post-war society in Sri
Lanka.
You will also be reimbursed for any internet data costs incurred during this interview to ensure
there are no additional expenses associated with your participation.
This research is supported by funding from the University of Northern British Columbia9s
Research Strategic Initiatives Grant (RSIG).
Questions or concerns about the research
If you have any questions about the purpose, processes, and participation in this research,
please contact me (Viduri Dediyagala) by email at dediyagal@unbc.ca or by telephone at +94
76 913 2519 (Sri Lanka).

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If you wish to contact the research supervisor of this project please reach out to
Dr. Gabrielle Daoust, Assistant Professor from the Department of Global and International
Studies by email at Gabrielle.Daoust@unbc.ca .
If you have any concerns or complaints about your rights as a research participant and/or your
experiences while participating in this research, please contact the UNBC Office of Research
by email at reb@unbc.ca or by telephone (Canada) at +001 250 960 6735.

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Appendix 2. Interview Guide
Interview Guide
Introduction
Thank you again for making time for this interview today! Before we begin, I9d like to go
over a few important points.
As mentioned earlier, the aim of this research project is to investigate the challenges and
opportunities in Sri Lanka9s current reconciliation efforts. The overarching goal is to explore
potential avenues for a more holistic reconciliation approach - ultimately fostering sustainable
positive peace in post-war Sri Lanka.
Our discussion today should last approximately 90 minutes.
I want to confirm that you had a chance to review the information sheet I provided earlier?
Please let me know if you need me to go over any details again. Do you have any other
questions about the research before we proceed?
For our conversation today, I want to ensure you are in a private setting where you feel
comfortable speaking openly. Are you in a sufficiently private location to proceed
comfortably?
With your permission, I will be taking some written notes during our interview. Is that alright
with you?
To ensure I accurately capture all the details of our discussion, I would also like to audio record
our conversation so I can transcribe it later. Let me reiterate that I will be the only person with
access to the recording and transcript. However, I will only record if you are comfortable with
that. Also, I can share any transcribed quotes or statements that may be included in my analysis,
so you can review them beforehand. I will make every attempt to limit the records
containing your personally identifiable information, keeping it anonymous from any
documents and files containing the interview data. This includes your name or any other
connection to your personal or professional affiliations. In the event of a data breach, I
will follow proper incident response protocols available through my affiliated university,
the University of Northern British Columbia.
Do I have your consent to audio record this interview?
[With participants9 consent, interviews will be audio- using Zoom9s recording function]
Oral consent
Before we begin, as noted in the Information Sheet your participation in this research interview
is entirely voluntary. You have the freedom to choose whether or not to take part. Even if you
initially agree to participate, you can change your mind at any point and withdraw from the
interview without providing any explanation. You also have the right to refuse to answer any
specific questions that may make you uncomfortable, again without needing to give a reason.
With that understanding, do you consent to participate in this research interview today? Do you
have any other questions before providing your consent?
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Interview Questions

1. How would you describe the current state of relations between the Sinhalese majority
and Tamil/Muslim minority communities in Sri Lanka?
2. From your perspective, what have been some of the main factors influencing the
processes and outcomes of reconciliation efforts since 2009?
3. To what extent have existing reconciliation processes effectively addressed the
concerns and issues of minority communities such as language rights, regional
autonomy, and political representation?
4. How have the existing reconciliation processes addressed the gendered aspects roles,
relations, and experiences of women?
4.1. Have the existing reconciliation processes considered the unique perspectives and
challenges, particularly for women from minority communities?
4.2. What do you think are the potential benefits of adopting a gender-sensitive
approach to peacebuilding and reconciliation efforts in post-war Sri Lanka?

5. What institutional reforms or policy changes would you recommend to strengthen
inclusive reconciliation processes?
6. Beyond government-led programs, what roles can civil society, grassroots activists, and
local peacebuilding initiatives play in fostering reconciliation?
7. Looking ahead, what do you see as the main challenges to sustainable peace in Sri
Lanka?
8. What is your vision for a holistic and sustainable reconciliation process that could lead
to positive peace in Sri Lanka9s multi-ethnic society?
9. Is there anything that we haven9t discussed today but you think is important to this
topic?
Since we discussed several complex issues today, are there any relevant policy documents,
reports, or other informational materials you could provide that would help me gain a deeper
understanding?
Finally, is there anyone else that you know who might have insight to share on this topic? If
so, would you be willing to ask this person for their explicit permission to share their name and
contact information with me? If they wish to see a copy of the information sheet first, please
share this with them.
Conclusion
Thank you again for taking the time to speak with me today and for sharing your valuable
knowledge and insights on this important topic.
I would like to inform you that there is an opportunity for an optional brief follow-up
conversation if I have any additional questions or require clarification on certain points.
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Additionally, during this follow-up conversation, I would also like to review any quotes or
statements from our initial interview that might be included in my final thesis project. This
follow-up conversation would take approximately 45 minutes and would take place between
June - August 2024.
I would like to invite you to participate in this optional follow-up conversation, but please note
that it is entirely up to you to decide if you would like to do so, and you are under no obligation
to accept this invitation.
So, would you be willing for me to contact you for this optional follow-up conversation?
Please remember that if you change your mind regarding this follow-up option at any point,
that is absolutely fine. You can simply contact me by email to let me know, and I will respect
your decision. If you have not received an invitation for a follow-up interview within 3
months of your initial interview, you can assume that no further participation will be
requested from you for this study.
Thank you again for your time and valuable contribution to this research!

172